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ill
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FROM THE
PERSONAL LIBRARY OF
JAMES BUELL MUNN
1890- 1967
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
\1M
EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
ESSAYS
COLERIDGE'S LECTURES
ON SHAKSPEARE AND
OTHER POETS AND
DRAMATISTS
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LJB^E^%T WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND
FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST
OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED
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THEOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
HISTORY ^ CLASSICAL
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
ESSAYS ^ ORATORY
POETRY & DRAMA
BIOGRAPHY
REFERENCE
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©Some Otfier
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Reprinted .... 1909, 1911, 19^4
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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
In treating of Shakspeare, said one of the best of Coleridge's
critics, "he set the sun in heaven." The present volume, im-
perfect record as it is, contains the greater substance of all that
the most inspired English critic said, whether casually or
deliberately, of the most inspired poet. Its contents are those of
the two posthumous miscellanies of notes for lectures and reports
of lectures, which were prepared by Henry Nelson Coleridge and
his wife — Coleridge's daughter, Sarah — in 1836, and by Payne
Collier in 1856. The first deals principally with the lectures
given by Coleridge in 181 8, but it contains many notes and
memoranda which belong equally to the earlier period. And
one suspects Payne Collier's contribution of the 1811-12 lectures,
although he was a less unreliable recorder than is usually sup-
posed, to have been in some instances from the earlier publica-
tion. Perhaps the best way to read in this double collection is to
turn up first the Notes upon Shakspeare's plays—" Hamlet" for
preference, in which Coleridge (who was himself an intellectual
Hamlet) used to perfection the subtle mirror afforded by his own
mind ; and then from that to work through the maze of his
lectures and poetic homilies. It must be remembered that the
whole book, as here constituted, is the tell-tale memorial of
the Coleridge who was too indolent to make good his harvest.
He had a magnificent intellect, a superb imagination, but no
corresponding will-power. The consequence is that his lectures
on Shakspeare were imperfectly prepared, often ill-delivered, and
left in the end to the mercy of careless reporters. But to those
who can discern the god in the cloud, these transcripts are of
inestimable value. Intermittent flashes of creative criticism break
continually through the misty envelope, and the brilliance is
according to the assimilative or the refractive quality of the
reader. For, as Coleridge quotes and says, "we are not all
Mogul diamonds, to take the light." There are readers that are
viii Editor's Introduction
sponges, and others that are sand-glasses or strain-bags, who let
the creative element escape, and retain only the dregs. There
are plentiful dregs in these pages.
A page ought to be added to enable us the better to realise
Coleridge, the lecturer, as he appeared to his hearers and
contemporaries.
Byron, in one of his letters, says : " We are going in a party to
hear the new Art of Poetry by the reformed schismatic." ^ This
was toward the end of the course, which according to Crabb
Robinson ended with eclat. " The room was crowded, and the
lecture had several passages more than brilliant." This was after
a very fluctuating success. At a December lecture, ostensibly
on Romeo and Juliet, he is said to have " surpassed himself in the
art of talking in a very interesting way without speaking at all on
the subject announced." On the same occasion Charles Lamb
whispered to his neighbour in the audience : " This is not
much amiss. He promised a lecture on the Nurse in Romeo and
Juliet, and he has given us instead one in the manner of the
nurse." Four times in all were his hearers invited to a lecture on
Romeo and Juliet, it seems ; and at least three times did he dis-
appoint them. Instead of the expected discourse, " We have," said
Crabb Robinson in a letter to Mrs Clarkson, " an immethodical
rhapsody. . . . Yet I cannot but be charmed with their splendida
vitia, and my chief displeasure is occasioned by my being forced
to hear the strictures of persons infinitely below Coleridge,
without any power of refuting or contradicting them."
For this course of 1811-12, Coleridge did not write out his
lectures, and they were nearly all delivered extemporaneously.
The Morgans, with whom he was staying at the time, found it
hard to get him to make any direct preparation. He would not
look into his Shakspeare, although they purposely put it in his
way, and an old MS. commonplace book seemb to have been his
sole remembrancer.
For the course of 18 18, he did, on his own declaration,
make a more settled preparation, on an eclectic plan of his
own.
" During a course of lectures," he writes, " I faithfully employ
all the intervening days in collecting and digesting the materials.
The day of the lecture I devote to the consideration, what of the
1 Crabb Robinson speaks of seeing Byron and Rogers at one of the lectures of this
course. He says of Bryon : " He was wrapped up, but I recognised his club-foot, and
indeed his countenance and general appearance."
Editors Introduction ix
mass before me is best fitted to answer the purpose of a lecture,
that is, to keep the audience awake and interested during the
delivery, and to leave a sting behind," that is, he explains, a
wish to study the subject anew, in the light of a new principle.
" I take far, far more pains," he adds, " than would go to the set
composition of a lecture, both by varied reading and by medita-
tion ; but for the words, illustrations, etc., I know almost as little
as any one of the audience . . . what they will be five minutes
before the lecture begins."
The 1811-12 lectures were delivered in rooms in Crane Court,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. The 18 18 course was held in rooms
at Flower-de-Luce Court — "near the Temple," Gilman says ; but
no doubt the Fleur-de-Hs Court, off Fetter Lane, is the actual
place, Coleridge, it is well to note, gave some earlier courses of
lectures in London ; one in 1806-7, at the Royal Institution, was
" On the Principles of the Fine Arts" ; and in 1807-8, he actually
began five courses of five lectures each on the English poets, of
which only the first course, that on Shakspeare, was delivered.
But this first course, and its date, are important, because of the
old question of Coleridge's debt to Schlegel. Schlegel's lectures
were given in 1808, as Mr. Ashe points out in this connection (in
his interesting edition of Coleridge's Lectures which was pub-
lished in 1883). Coleridge himself speaks of one London detached
lecture of his, at the " Crown and Anchor," whose date was pro-
bably 1817 or 1818.
Other lectures were given in 1813 at the Surrey Institution, on
Belles Lettres ; and in Bristol, at the great room of the " White
Lion," in 1813-14. After some characteristic delays and dis-
appointments, these Bristol lectures gave immense pleasure to the
few elect who went to them. Cottle describes them as of a
conversational character, and says, " The attention of his hearers
never flagged, and his large dark eyes, and his countenance, in
an excited state, glowing with intellect, predisposed his audience
in his favour." We gather from other references that they did
not bring him much gold, greatly as he and his unlucky family
needed it. The London course of 181 8 ends his career as a
lecturer ; and if it was a rather more profitable adventure, it was
hardly one to reinstate his poor fortunes. He was then a man of
forty-six. In 1834 he died.
Editor's Introduction
THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF HIS PUBLISHED WORKS
Greek Prize Ode on the Slave Trade, Cambridge, 1792. Monody on
the Death of Chatterton (first draft), 1 794. The Fall of Robespierre : An
Historic Drama (Coleridge and Southey), 1794. Contributions to The
Cambridge Intelligencer and The Morning Chronicle, 1 794- 179 5. The
Watchman, 1796. Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, The Vision of the
Maid of Orleans {^owihty^s Joan of Arc), republished as The Destiny of
Nations, 1796, Ode on the Departing Year, 1 796. Contributions to
The Monthly Magazine, 1 796- 1 797. Fears in Solitude; France, an
Ode ; Frost at Midnight, 1 798. Lyrical Ballads, 1798 (containing " The
Ancient Mariner " and other poems). Contributions to The Morning Post,
1798-1802. Poems in Annual Anthology, 1799-1800. Wallenstein {ixova.
the German of Schiller), 1800. Contributions in Prose and Verse to The
Courier, 1807-1811. The Friend, 1 June, 1809, to 15 March, 1 8 ID.
Contributions to Southey's Omniana, 1812. Remorse, 181 3 (remodelled
from Osorio, written in 1797 ; pub. 1873). Essays on the Fine Arts
(Felix Farley's Bristol Journal, 1814). Christabel ; Kubla Khan ; Pains
of Sleep, 1816 (first and second parts of Christabel, written 1797 and 1800).
The States7nan's Manual; or. The Bible the Best Guide to Political Skill
and Foresight, 1816. Sibylline Leaves, 1817. Zapolya: A Christmas
Tale, 1817. Biographia Literaria, 1817. On Method {Esssiy forming
the General Introduction to Encyclopcedia Metropolitana, 18 17- 18 18).
Contributions to Blackwood' s Magazine, 1819-1822. Aids to Reflection,
1825. On the Constitution of the Church and State, 1830.
A Moral and Political Lecture, 1795. Condones ad Populam ; or,
Addresses to the People, 1795. The Plot Discovered : An Address to the
People, 1795.
First Collected Edition of Poems and Dramas, 1828.
POSTHUMOUS WORKS
Specimens of his Table Talk (Edited by H. N. Coleridge), 1835.
Letters, Conversations, atid Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(Edited by T. Allsop), 1836, 58, 64. Literary Remains (Edited by H.
N. Coleridge), 1836-1839. Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (Edited
by H. N. Coleridge), 1840. Hints towards the Formation of a more
Comprehensive Theory of Life (Edited by S. B. Watson), 1848. Notes
and Lectures upon Shakspeare and some of the Old Dramatists (Edited by
Editors Introduction xi
Sara Coleridge), 1849. Essays on his own Times (Edited by S. Cole-
ridge), 3 vols., 1850. Notes upon English Divines (Edited by Derwent
Coleridge), 1853. Notes: Theological, Political^ and Miscellaneous
(Edited by D. Coleridge), 1853. Lectures on Shakespeare, from Notes by
J. P. Collier, 1856. Poetical and Dramatic Works, founded on the
Author's latest edition of 1834 (Edited by R. H. Shepherd), 4 vols.,
London and Boston, 1 877-1 881. Co7nplete Works (Edited by Professor
Shedd), 1884. Miscellanies: ^Esthetic and Literary {Edited hy T. Ashe),
1885. The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Edited by James
Dyke Campbell), 1893. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1785-1S34
(Edited by E. H. Coleridge), 2 vols., 1895.
CONTENTS
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February
1818, to a Gentleman who attended the Course of Lectures
given in the Spring of that Year
Extract from a Letter to J. Biiton, Esq
Shakspeare, with introductory matter on poetry, the
drama, and the stage
Definition of Poetry ....
Greek Drama .....
Progress of the Drama
The Drama generally, and Public Taste
Shakspeare, a Poet generally
Shakspeare' s Judgment equal to his Genius
Recapitulation, and Summary of the Characteristics of
Shakspeare' s Dramas .....
Outline of an Introductory Lecture upon Shakspeare
Order of Shakspeare' s Plays
Notes on the Tempest
Love's Labour's Lost
Midsummer Night's Dream
Comedy of Errors
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
All's Well that Ends Well
Merry Wives of Windsor
Measure for Measure
Cymbeline
Titus Andronicus
Troilus and Cressida
Coriolanus
Julius Cassar
Antony and Cleopatra
Timon of Athens
Romeo and Juliet
xiv Contents
Shakspeare — continued : —
Shakspeare's English Historical Plays
King John
Richard 11.
Henry IV. Part I.
Henry IV. Part II.
Henry V.
Henry VI. Part I.
Richard III.
Lear
Hamlet .
Notes on Macbeth
Notes on the Winter's Tale
Notes on Othello
Notes on Ben Jonson
Whalley's Preface
Whalley's Life of Jonson
Every Man out of His Humour
Poetaster
Fall of Sejanus
Volpone .
Epicaene .
The Alchemist
Catiline's Conspiracy
Bartholomew Fair
The Devn is an Ass
The Staple of News
The New Inn .
Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher
Harris's Commendatory Poem on Fletcher
Life of Fletcher in Stockdale's Edition, i^
Maid's Tragedy
A King and no King .
The Scornful La4y .
The Custom of the Country
The Elder Brother .
The Spanish Curate .
Wit Without Money .
The Humorous Lieutenant
Contents
XV
Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher — continued: — page
The ISlad Lover ..,..,. 200
The Loyal Subject
. 200
Rule a Wife and have a Wife
201
The Laws of Candy .
. 201
The Little French Lawyer .
. 202
Valentin ian
. 202
Rollo . . .
• 20s
The Wildgoose Chase
. 206
A Wife for a Month .
. 207
The Pilgrim
. 207
The Queen of Corinth
. 207
The Noble Gentleman
. 208
The Coronation
. 209
Wit at Several Weapons .
. 209
The Fair Maid of the Inn .
. 210
The Two Noble Kinsmen .
. 211
The Woman Hater .
. 212
A COURSE OF LECTURES
Prospectus .........
Lecture L General Character of the Gothic Mind in the
Middle Ages ......
n. General Character of the Gothic Literature and
Art
III. The Troubadours, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Pulci,
Chaucer, Spenser .....
VII. Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Mas-
singer. Notes on Massinger
VIII. Don Quixote, Cervantes .....
IX. On the Distinctions of the Witty, the Droll, the
Odd, and the Humorous ; the Nature and Con-
stituents of Humour ; Rabelais, Swift, Sterne
X. Donne, Dante, Milton, Paradise Lost
XI. Asiatic and Greek Mythologies, Robinson Crusoe,
Use of works of Imagination in Education
XII. Dreams, Apparitions, Alchemists, Personality of
the Evil Being, Bodily Identity .
XIII. On Poesy or Art
XIV. On Style
213
216
218
223
236
247
258
269
291
301
311
319
XVI
Contents
the
On the Prometheus of iEschylus ....
Summary of an Essay on the fundamental position of
Mysteries in Relation to Greek Tragedy
Fragment of an Essay on Taste. 1810
Fragment of an Essay on Beauty. 18 18
Notes on Chapman's Homer. Extract of a Letter sent with
the Volume. 1807 .
Note in Casaubon's Persius. 1807
Notes on Barclay's Argenis. 1803
Notes on Chalmers's Life of Samuel Daniel
Bishop Corbet ....
Notes on Selden's Table Talk
Notes on Tom Jones
Another set of Notes on Tom Jones .
Jonathan Wild ....
Notes on Junius. 1807 .
Wonderfulness of Prose .
Notes on Herbert's Temple and Harvey's Synagogue
Extract from a Letter of S. T. Coleridge to W. Collins, R.A.
Printed in the Life of Collins by his Son. Vol. i. .
Notes on Mathias' Edition of Gray. On a distant prospect
Eton College .......
Barry Cornwall .......
On the Mode of Studying Kant. Extract from a Letter of
Mr. Coleridge to J. Gooden, Esq.
Notes on the Palingenesien of Jean Paul
PAGB
326
349
351
354
356
359
359
361
361
362
Z^Z
365
366
367
371
372
1>77
378
382
383
LECTURES ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON.
The First Lecture .
The Second Lecture
The Sixth Lecture .
The Seventh Lecture
The Eighth Lecture
The Ninth Lecture
The Twelfth Lecture
389
396
405
419
435
445
465
JOSEPH HENRY GREEN, Esq.
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS
THE APPROVED FRIEND
OF COLERIDGE
THESE VOLUMES ARE GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
PREFACE
TO THE 1836 EDITION OF * LITERARY
REMAINS '
Mr. Coleridge by his will, dated in September, 1829,
authorized his executor, if he should think it expedient,
to publish any of the notes or writing made by him
(Mr. C.) in his books, or any other of his manuscripts or
writings, or any letters which should thereafter be collected
from, or suppUed by, his friends or correspondents.
Agreeably to this authority, an arrangement was made,
under the superintendence of Mr. Green, for the collection
of Coleridge's Uterary remains ; and at the same time the
preparation for the press of such part of the materials as
should consist of criticism and general literature, was
entrusted to the care of the present Editor. The volumes
now offered to the public are the first results of that
arrangement. They must in any case stand in need of
much indulgence from the ingenuous reader ; — multa
sunt condonanda in opere postumo ; but a short state-
ment of the difficulties attending the compilation may
serve to explain some apparent anomalies, and to preclude
some unnecessary censure.
The materials were fragmentary in the extreme —
Sibylline leaves ; — notes of the lecturer, memoranda of
the investigator, out-pourings of the solitary and self-
communing student. The fear of the press was not in
3
4 Preface
them. Numerous as they were, too, they came to light,
or were communicated, at different times, before and
after the printing was commenced ; and the dates, the
occasions, and the references, in most instances remained
to be discovered or conjectured. To give to such materials
method and continuity, as far as might be, — to set them
forth in the least disadvantageous manner which the
circumstances would permit, — was a delicate and per-
plexing task ; and the Editor is painfully sensible that
he could bring few qualifications for the undertaking, but
such as were involved in a many years' intercourse with
the author himself, a patient study of his writings, a
reverential admiration of his genius, and an affectionate
desire to help in extending its beneficial influence.
The contents of these volumes are drawn from a portion
only of the manuscripts entrusted to the Editor : the
remainder of the collection, which, under favourable
circumstances, he hopes may hereafter see the light, is at
least of equal value with what is now presented to the
reader as a sample. In perusing the following pages, the
reader will, in a few instances, meet with disquisitions of
a transcendental character, which, as a general rule,
have been avoided : the truth is, that they were sometimes
found so indissolubly intertwined with the more popular
matter which preceded and followed, as to make separa-
tion impracticable. There are very many to whom no
apology will be necessary in this respect ; and the Editor
only adverts to it for the purpose of obviating, as far as
may be, the possible complaint of the more general reader.
But there is another point to which, taught by past
experience, he attaches more importance, and as to
which, therefore, he ventures to put in a more express
Preface 5
and particular caution. In many of the books and papers,
which have been used in the compilation of these volumes,
passages from other writers, noted down by Mr. Coleridge
as in some way remarkable, were mixed up with his own
comments on such passages, or with his reflections on
other subjects, in a manner very embarrassing to the eye
of a third person undertaking to select the original matter,
after the lapse of several years. The Editor need not say
that he has not knowingly admitted any thing that was
not genuine, without an express declaration as in Vol. I.
p. I ; 1 and in another instance. Vol. II. p. 379,^ he has
intimated his own suspicion ; but, besides these, it is
possible that some cases of mistake in this respect may
have occurred. There may be one or two passages — they
cannot well be more — printed in these volumes, which
belong to other writers ; and if such there be, the Editor
can only plead in excuse, that the work has been prepared
by him amidst many distractions, and hope that, in this
instance at least, no ungenerous use will be made of such
a circumstance to the disadvantage of the author, and
that persons of greater reading or more retentive memories
than the Editor, who may discover any such passages,
will do him the favour to communicate the fact.
To those who have been kind enough to communicate
books and manuscripts for the purpose of the present
publication, the Editor and, through him, Mr. Coleridge's
executor return their grateful thanks. In most cases a
specific acknowledgment has been made. But, above
and independently of all others, it is to Mr. and Mrs.
1 The Editor is here speaking of his note to the Fall of Robespierre, published in the
former Vol. i. of the Literary Remains^ shewing that th«: second and third acts were
by Mr. Southey.
3 This reference is to his remark on an extract from Crashaw's //>'«/.*« to the name of
Jesus, printed in Vol. ii. of the Lit. Rem. as first published.
6 Preface
Gillman, and to Mr. Green himself, that the pubUc are
indebted for the preservation and use of the principal
part of the contents of these volumes. The claims of
those respected individuals on the gratitude of the friends
and admirers of Coleridge and his works are already well
known, and in due season those claims will receive addi-
tional confirmation.
With these remarks, sincerely conscious of his own
inadequate execution of the task assigned to him, yet
confident withal of the general worth of the contents of
the following pages — the Editor commits the reliques of
a great man to the indulgent consideration of the Public.
Lincoln's Inn,
August II, 1836.
LITERARY REMAINS
Extract from a Letter written by Mr. Coleridge, in February,
1818, to a gentleman who attended the course of Lectures
given in the spring of that year.
My next Friday's lecture will, if I do not grossly flatter-
blind myself, be interesting, and the points of view not
only original, but new to the audience. I make this
distinction, because sixteen or rather seventeen years
ago, I delivered eighteen lectures on Shakspeare, at the
Royal Institution ; three-fourths of which appeared at
that time startling paradoxes, although they have since
been adopted even by men, who then made use of them
as proofs of my flighty and paradoxical turn of mind ;
all to prove that Shakspeare' s judgment was, if possible,
still more wonderful than his genius ; or rather, that
the contradistinction itself between judgment and genius
rested on an utterly false theory. This, and its proofs
and grounds have been — I should not have said adopted,
but produced as their own legitimate children by some,
and by others the merit of them attributed to a foreign
writer, whose lectures were not given orally till two years
after mine, rather than to their countryman ; though
I dare appeal to the most adequate judges, as Sir George
Beaumont, the Bishop of Durham, Mr. Sotheby, and
afterwards to Mr. Rogers and Lord Byron, whether there
is one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not
an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not
established and applied in detafl by me. Plutarch tells
us, that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and
justifiable in the calumniated, &c.
8 Letter
Extract from a Letter to J. Briton, Esq.
28th Feb., 18 19, Highgate.
Dear Sir, — First permit me to remove a very natural,
indeed almost inevitable, mistake, relative to my lectures :
namely, that I have them, or that the lectures of one
place or season are in any way repeated in another. So
far from it, that on any point that I had ever studied
(and on no other should I dare discourse — I mean, that
I would not lecture on any subject for which I had to
acquire the main knowledge, even though a month's or
three months' previous time were allowed me ; on no
subject that had not employed my thoughts for a large
portion of my life since earliest manhood, free of all
outward and particular purpose) — on any point within
my habit of thought, I should greatly prefer a subject
I had never lectured on, to one which I had repeatedly
given ; and those who have attended me for any two
seasons successively will bear witness, that the lecture
given at the London Philosophical Society, on the Romeo
and Juliet, for instance, was as different from that given
at the Crown and Anchor, as if they had been by two
individuals who, without any communication with each
other, had only mastered the same principles of philo-
sophic criticism. This was most strikingly evidenced
in the coincidence between my lectures and those of
Schlegel ; such, and so close, that it was fortunate for
my moral reputation that I had not only from five to
seven hundred ear witnesses that the passages had been
given by me at the Royal Institution two years before
Schlegel commenced his lectures at Vienna, but that
notes had been taken of these by several men and ladies
of high rank. The fact is this ; during a course of
lectures, I faithfully employ all the intervening days in
collecting and digesting the materials, whether I have
or have not lectured on the same subject before, making
no difference. The day of the lecture, till the hour of
commencement, I devote to the consideration, what of
the mass before me is best fitted to answer the purposes
of a lecture, that is, to keep the audience awake and
interested during the dehvery, and to leave a sting behind,
that is, a disposition to study the subject anew, under
Definition of Poetry 9
the light of a new principle. Several times, however,
partly from apprehension respecting my health and
animal spirits, partly from the wish to possess copies
that might afterwards be marketable among the publishers,
I have previously written the lecture ; but before I had
proceeded twenty minutes, I have been obliged to push
the MS. away, and give the subject a new turn. Nay,
this was so notorious, that many of my auditors used
to threaten me, when they saw any number of written
papers upon my desk, to steal them away ; declaring
they never felt so secure of a good lecture as when they
perceived that I had not a single scrap of writing before
me. I take far, far more pains than would go to the
set composition of a lecture, both by varied reading
and by meditation ; but for the words, illustrations,
&c., I know almost as little as any one of the audience
(that is, those of any thing like the same education
with myself) what they will be five minutes before the
lecture begins. Such is my way, for such is my nature ;
and in attempting any other, I should only torment
myself in order to disappoint my auditors — torment
myself during the delivery, I mean ; for in all other
respects it would be a much shorter and easier task to
deliver them from writing. I am anxious to preclude
any semblance of affectation ; and have therefore troubled
you with this lengthy preface before I have the hardihood
to assure you, that you might as well ask me what my
dreams were in the year 1814, as what my course of
lectures was at the Surrey Institution. Fuimus Troes.
SHAKSPEARE,
With introductory matter on Poetry, the Drama, and
the Stage.
DEFINITION OF POETRY.
Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to
science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to
metre. The proper and immediate object of science
is the acquirement, or communication, of truth; the
proper and immediate Oioject of poetry is the 50m-
lo Definition of Poetry
munication of immediate pleasure. This definition
is useful ; but as it would include novels and other
works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems,
there must be some additional character by which poetry
is not only divided from opposites, but Hkewise dis-
tinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of
composition. Now how is this to be effected ? In
animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions
and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in
that natural language which the contemplation of them
would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind ; yet
still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem,
though no work could deserve that name which did
not include all this, together with something else. What
is this ? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar
state and degree of excitement, which arises in the poet
himself in the act of composition ; — and in order to under-
stand this, we must combine a more than ordinary
sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents con-
templated by the poet, consequent on a more than
common sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity
of the mind in respect of the fancy and the irnaginatipn.
Hence is produced a more viviO^eflection of the truths
of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant
activity modifying and correcting these truths by that
sort of pleasurable emotion, which the exertion of all
our faculties gives in a certain degree ; but which can
only be felt in perfection under the fuU play of those
powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than
voluntary, and in which the effort required bears no
proportion to the activity enjoyed. This is the state
which permits the production of a highly pleasurable
whole, of which each part shall also communicate for
itself a distinct and conscious pleasure ; and hjgpce^ arises
the definition, which I trust is now inteUigiBle, that
poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition,
opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for
its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language
natural to us in a state of excitement, — but distinguished
from other species of composition, not excluded by the
former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the
whole consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from
the component parts ; — and the perfection of which
Definition of Poetry ii
is, to communicate from each part the greatest immediate
pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure
on the whole. This, of course, will vary with the different
modes of poetry ; — and that splendour of particular
lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an im-
passioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be
a blemish and proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an epic
poem.
It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton in three
incidental words has implied all which for the purposes
of more distinct apprehension, which at first must be
slow-paced in order to be distinct, I have endeavoured
to develope in a precise and strictly adequate definition.
Speaking of poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, " which
is simple, sensuous, passionate." How awful is the
power of words ! — fearful often in their consequences
when merely felt, not understood ; but most awful
when both felt and understood ! — Had these three words
only been properly understood by, and present in the
minds of, general readers, not only almost a library
of false poetry would have been either precluded or
still-born, but, what is of more consequence, works truly
excellent and capable of enlarging the understanding,
warming and purifying the heart, and placing in the centre
of the whole being the germs of noble and manlike
actions, would have been the common diet of the intellect
instead. For the first condition, simplicity, — while, on the
one hand, it distinguishes poetry from the arduous pro-
cesses of science, labouring towards an end not yet arrived
at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which
the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams murmur-
ing by his side, and trees and flowers and human dwellings
to make his journey as delightful as the object of it is
desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers
and painfully make the road on which .others are to
travel, — precludes, on the other hand, every affectation
and morbid peculiarity ; — the second condition, sensu-
ousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that
definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that
modification of the images themselves, without which
poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice,
or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful, day-dream-
ing ; and the third condition, passion, provides that
12 Definition of Poetry
neither thought nor imagery shall be simply objective,
but that the passio vera of humanity shall warm and
animate both.
To return, however, to the previous definition, this
most general and distinctive character of a poem originates
in the poetic genius itself ; and though it comprises
whatever can with any propriety be called a poem (unless
that word be a mere lazy synonyme for a composition
in metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely dis-
criminative, but full and adequate, definition of poetry
in its highest and most pecuHar sense, only so far as
the distinction still results from the poetic genius, which
sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid
representations of the poem by the energy without effort
of the poet's own mind, — by the spontaneous activity
of his imagination and fancy, and by whatever else with
these reveals itself in the balancing and reconciling of
opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with difference,
a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary
objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more
than usual order, self-possession and judgment with
enthusiasm and vehement feeling, — and which, while it
blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial,
still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter,
and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with
the images, passions, characters, and incidents of the
poem : —
Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns —
As we our food into our nature change !
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings !
Thus doth she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
Which then reclothed in divers names and fates
Steal access thro' our senses to our minds}
1 Sir John Davies on the Immortality of the Soul, sect. iv. The words and lines in
italics are substituted to apply these verses to the poetic genius. The greater part of
ihis latter paragraph may be found adopted, with some alterations, in the Biographia
Literaria, vol. ii. c. 14 ; but I have thought it better in this instance and some
Greek Drama 13
GREEK DRAMA.
It is truly singular that Plato, — whose philosophy and
religion were but exotic at home, and a mere opposition
to the finite in all things, genuine prophet and anticipator
as he was of the Protestant Christian aera, — should have
given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification of
our Shakspeare. For he relates that, when all the
other guests had either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates
only, together with Aristophanes and Agathon, remained
awake, and that, while he continued to drink with them
out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most
reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one
and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry,
or that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, to contain
within himself the powers of comedy. ^ Now, as this
was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient
critics, and contrary to all their experience, it is evident
that Plato must have fixed the eye of his contemplation
on the innermost essentials of the drama, abstracted
from the forms of age or country. In another passage
he even adds the reason, namely, that opposites illustrate
each other's nature, and in their struggle draw forth
the strength of the combatants, and display the conqueror
as sovereign even on the territories of the rival power.
Nothing can more forcibly exemplify the separative
spirit of the Greek arts than their comedy as opposed
to their tragedy. But as the immediate struggle of
contraries supposes an arena common to both, so both
were alike ideal ; that is, the comedy of Aristophanes
rose to as great a distance above the ludicrous of real
life, as the tragedy of Sophocles above its tragic events
and passions, — and it is in this one point, of absolute
others, to run the chance of bringing a few passages twice over to the recollection of
the reader, than to weaken the force of the original argument by breaking the
connection. Ed.
^ €^€yp6/jL€vos S^ Idelv rods fiiv dWovs KadevoofTas Kal olxofi^povs,
'Ayddoifa 5^ Kal ' KpLaT0(p6.vi]v koI Sw/cpdrT? Irt ixbvovs iyp'/jyopevai, Kal
irlveLV eK (pidXrjs fj.€yd\7}$ eTride^La. rbv oZv Sw/cparT; avrots diaXeyecrdai,'
Kal TO. fxkv aXKa 6 'ApLarddTj/jios ovk ^(prj fjie/JLvija dai tov \byov' (oi^re ydp e^
dpxv^ Trapayeviadai, virovvaTa^eiv re) rb p.kvTOL KecpdXaiov ^(prj, irpoaavay'
Ka^eLu rbv liiOKparr] 6jj.oKoyeiy avrodi tov avTov dv8p6s e'Cvat KU3fi(i}diav Kal
TpayuSiav iiriaraadaL Troieiv, Kal Toy t^x^V Tpayi^doiroLov tvra, Kal Koofuf-
ooTTotoV elvai.. Symp. sub fine.
14 Greek Drama
ideality, that the comedy of Shakspeare and the old
comedy of Athens coincide. In this also alone did the
Greek tragedy and comedy unite ; in every thing else
they were exactly opposed to each other. Tragedy
is poetry in its deepest earnest ; comedy is poetry in
unlimited jest. Earnestness consists in the direction
and convergence of all the powers of the soul to one
aim, and in the voluntary restraint of its activity in
consequence ; the opposite, therefore, lies in the apparent
abandonment of all definite aim or end, and in the removal
of all bounds in the exercise of the mind, — attaining its
real end, as an entire contrast, most perfectly, the greater
the display is of intellectual wealth squandered in the
wantonness of sport without an object, and the more
abundant the life and vivacity in the creations of the
arbitrary ¥/ill.
The later comedy, even where it was really comic,
was doubtless likewise more comic, the more free it
appeared from any fixed aim. Misunderstandings of
intention, fmitless struggles of absurd passion, contra-
dictions of temper, and laughable situations there were ;
but still the form of the representation itself was serious ;
it proceeded as much according to settled laws, and used
as much the same means of art, though to a different
purpose, as the regular tragedy itself. But in the old
comedy the very form itself is whimsical ; the whole
work is one great jest, comprehending a world of jests
within it, among which each maintains its own place
without seeming to concern itself as to the relation in
which it may stand to its fellows. In short, in Sophocles,
the constitution of tragedy is monarchical, but such as
it existed in elder Greece, limited by laws, and therefore
the more venerable, — all the parts adapting and sub-
mitting themselves to the majesty of the heroic sceptre :
— in Aristophanes, comedy, on the contrary, is poetry
in its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental
principle with it, rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy,
than to destroy the independence and privileges of its
individual constituents, — place, verse, characters, even
single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each turning
on the pivot of its own free will.
The tragic poet idealizes his characters by giving to
the spiritual part of our nature a more decided prepon-
Greek Drama 15
derance over the animal cravings and impulses, than
is met with in real life : the comic poet idealizes his
characters by making the animal the governing power,
and the intellectual the mere instrument. But as tragedy
is not a collection of virtues and perfections, but takes
care only that the vices and imperfections shall spring
from the passions, errors, and prejudices which arise
out of the soul ; — so neither is comedy a mere crowd
of vices and follies, but whatever qualities it represents,
even though they are in a certain sense amiable, it still
displays them as having their origin in some dependence
on our lower nature, accompanied with a defect in true
freedom of spirit and self-subsistence, and subject to
that unconnection by contradictions of the inward being,
to which all folly is owing.
The ideal of earnest poetry consists in the union and
harmonious melting down, and fusion of the sensual
into the spiritual, — of man as an animal into man as a
power of reason and self-government. And this we
have represented to us most clearly in the plastic art,
or statuary ; where the perfection of outward form is
a symbol of the perfection of an inward idea ; where
the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and spiritualized
even to a state of glory, and like a transparent substance,
the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes alto-
gether a vehicle and fixture of light, a means of developing
its beauties, and unfolding its wealth of various colours
without disturbing its unity, or causing a division of the
parts. The sportive ideal, on the contrary, consists in
the perfect harmony and concord of the higher nature
with the animal, as with its ruHng principle and its acknow-
ledged regent. The understanding and practical reason
are represented as the willing slaves of the senses and
appetites, and of the passions arising out of them. Hence
we may admit the appropriateness to the old comedy,
as a work of defined art, of allusions and descriptions,
which morality can never justify, and, only with reference
to the author himself, and only as being the effect or
rather the cause of the circumstances in which he wrote,
can consent even to palliate.
The old comedy rose to its perfection in Aristophanes,
and in him also it died with the freedom of Greece. Then
arose a species of drama, more fitly called, dramatic
1 6 Greek Drama
entertainment than comedy, but of which, nevertheless,
our modem comedy (Shakspeare's altogether excepted)
is the genuine descendant. Euripides had already
brought tragedy lower down and by many steps nearer
to the real world than his predecessors had ever done,
and the passionate admiration which Menander and
Philemon expressed for him, and their open avowals
that he was their great master, entitle us to consider
their dramas as of a middle species, between tragedy
and comedy, — not the tragi-comedy, or thing of hetero-
geneous parts, but a complete whole, founded on principles
of its own. Throughout we find the drama of Menander
distinguishing itself from tragedy, but not, as the genuine
old comedy, contrasting with, and opposing it. Tragedy,
indeed, carried the thoughts into the mythologic world,
in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes,
which convince the inmost heart that their final cause
is not to be discovered in the hmits of mere mortal life,
and force us into a presentiment, however dim, of a
state in which those struggles of inward free will with
outward necessity, which form the true subject of the
tragedian, shall be reconciled and solved ; — the enter-
tainment or new comedy, on the other hand, remained
within the circle of experience. Instead of the tragic
destiny, it introduced the power of chance ; even in
the few fragments of Menander and Philemon now re-
maining to us, we find many exclamations and reflections
concerning chance and fortune, as in the tragic poets
concerning destiny. In tragedy, the moral law, either
as obeyed or violated, above all consequences — its own
maintenance or violation constituting the most important
of all consequences — forms the ground ; the new comedy,
and our modern comedy in general, (Shakspeare excepted
as before) lies in prudence or imprudence, enlightened
or misled self-love. The whole moral system of the
entertainment exactly like that of fable, consists in
rules of prudence, with an exquisite conciseness, and
at the same time an exhaustive fulness of sense. An old
critic said that tragedy was the flight or elevation of life,
comed}' (that of Menander) its arrangement or ordonnance.
Add to these features a portrait-like truth of character,
— not so far indeed as that a bona fide individual should
be described or imagined, but yet so that the features
Greek Drama 17
which give interest and permanence to the class should
be individualized. The old tragedy moved in an ideal
world, — the old comedy in a fantastic world. As the
entertainment, or new comedy, restrained the creative
activity both of the fancy and the imagination, it in-
demnified the understanding in appealing to the judgment
for the probability of the scenes represented. The
ancients themselves acknowledged the new comedy as
an exact copy of real life. The grammarian, Aristophanes,
somewhat affectedly exclaimed : — " O Life and Menander !
which of you two imitated the other ? " In short the
form of this species of drama was poetry, the stuff or
matter was prose. It was prose rendered delightful by
the blandishments and measured motions of the muse.
Yet even this was not universal. The mimes of Sophron,
so passionately admired by Plato, were written in prose,
and were scenes out of real life conducted in dialogue.
The exquisite Feast of Adonis ('2vpaxoUiai Jj *A6wi//a^oL»<ra/)
in Theocritus, we are told, with some others of his
eclogues, were close imitations of certain mimes of Sophron
— free translations of the prose into hexameters.
It will not be improper, in this place, to make a few
remarks on the remarkable character and functions of
the chorus in the Greek tragic drama.
The chorus entered from below, close by the orchestra,
and there, pacing to and fro during the choral odes,
performed their solemn measured dance. In the centre
of the orchestra, directly over against the middle of the
scene, there stood an elevation with steps in the shape of
a large altar, as high as the boards of the logeion or move-
able stage. This elevation was named the thymele,
{^vfxsXr,) and served to recall the origin and original
purpose of the chorus, as an altar-song in honour of
the presiding deity. Here, and on these steps the persons
of the chorus sate collectively, when they were not sing-
ing ; attending to the dialogue as spectators, and acting
as (what in truth they were) the ideal representatives
of the real audience, and of the poet himself in his own
character, assuming the supposed impressions made by
the drama, in order to direct and rule them. But when
the chorus itself formed part of the dialogue, then the
leader of the band, the foreman or coryphceus, ascended,
as some think, the level summit of the thymele in order
1 8 Greek Drama
to command the stage, or, perhaps, the whole chorus
advanced to the front of the orchestra, and thus put
themselves in ideal connection, as it were, with the
dramatis personce there acting. This thymele was in the
centre of the whole edifice, all the measurements were
calculated, and the semicircle of the amphitheatre was
drawn, from this point. It had a double use, a twofold
purpose ; it constantly reminded the spectators of the
origin of tragedy as a religious service, and declared
itself as the ideal representative of the audience by having
its place exactly in the point, to which all the radii from
the different seats or benches converged.
In this double character, as constituent parts, and
yet at the same time as spectators, of the drama, the
chorus could not but tend to enforce the unity of place ;
— not on the score of any supposed improbability, which
the understanding or common sense might detect in a
change of place ; — but because the senses themselves
put it out of the power of any imagination to conceive
a place coming to, and going away from the persons,
instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there
are instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus,
the poets have hazarded this by a change in that part
of the scenery which represented the more distant objects
to the eye of the spectator — a demonstrative proof, that
this alternately extolled and ridiculed unity (as ignorantly
ridiculed as extolled) was grounded on no essential prin-
ciple of reason, but arose out of circumstances which
the poet could not remove, and therefore took up into
the form of the drama, and co-organised it with all the
other parts into a living whole.
The Greek tragedy may rather be compared to our
serious opera than to the tragedies of Shakspeare ; never-
theless, the difference is far greater than the likeness.
In the opera aU is subordinated to the music, the dresses
and the scenery ; — the poetry is a mere vehicle for articu-
lation, and as little pleasure is lost by ignorance of the
Itahan language, so is little gained by the knowledge
of it. But in the Greek drama all was but as instruments
and accessaries to the poetry ; and hence we should
form a better notion of the choral music from the solemn
hymns and psalms of austere church music than from
any species of theatrical singing. A single flute or pipe
Greek Drama 19
v/as the ordinary accompaniment ; and it is not to be
supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed
to obscure the distinct hearing of the words. On the
contrary, the evident purpose was to render the words
more audible, and to secure by the elevations and pauses
greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the
choral songs are, and ever must have been, the most
difficult part of the tragedy ; there occur in them the
most involved verbal compounds, the newest expressions,
the boldest images, the most recondite allusions. Is it
credible that the poets would, one and all, have been
thus prodigal of the stores of art and genius, if they had
known that in the representation the whole must have
been lost to the audience, — at a time too, when the means
of after publication were so difficult and expensive, and the
copies of their works so slowly and narrowly circulated ?
The masks also must be considered — their vast variety
and admirable workmanship. Of this we retain proof
by the marble masks which represented them ; but to
this in the real mask we must add the thinness of the
substance and the exquisite fitting on to the head of the
actor; so that not only were the very eyes painted
with a single opening left for the pupil of the actor's
eye, but in some instances, even the iris itself was
painted, when the colour was a known characteristic of
the divine or heroic personage represented.
Finally, I will note down those fundamental character-
istics which contradistinguish the ancient literature
from the modern generally, but which more especially
appear in prominence in the tragic drama. The ancient
was allied to statuary, the modern refers to painting.
In the first there is a predominance of rhythm and melody,
in the second of harmony and counterpoint. The Greeks
idolized the finite, and therefore v/ere the masters of all
grace, elegance, proportion, fancy, dignity, majesty —
of whatever, in short, is capable of being definitely con-
veyed by defined forms or thoughts : the moderns revere
the infinite, and affect the indefinite as a vehicle of the
infinite ; — hence their passions, their obscure hopes
and fears, their wandering through the unknown, their
grander moral feelings, their more august conception of
man as man, their future rather than their past — in a
Vv^ord, their sublimity.
20 Progress of the Drama
PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA.
Let two persons join in the same scheme to ridicule
a third, and either take advantage of, or invent, some
story for that purpose, and mimicry will have already
produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting
treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and
burlesque by following the already established plan
of tragedy ; and the first man of genius who seizes the
idea, and reduces it into form, — into a work of art, —
by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country.
How just this account is wtll appear from the fact
that in the first or old comedy of the Athenians, most
of the dramatis personce were living characters intro-
duced under their own names ; and no doubt, their
ordinary dress, manner, person and voice were closely
mimicked. In less favourable states of society, as that
of England in the middle ages, the beginnings of comedy
would be constantly taking place from the mimics and
satirical minstrels ; but from want of fixed abode, popular
government, and the successive attendance of the same
auditors, it would stiU remain in embryo. I shall,
perhaps, have occasion to observe that this remark is
not without importance in explaining the essential
differences of the modern and ancient theatres.
Phenomena, similar to those which accompanied the
origin of tragedy and comedy among the Greeks, would
take place among the Romans much more slowly, and
the drama would, in any case, have much longer re-
mained in its first irregular form from the character of
the people, their continual engagements in wars of con-
quest, the nature of their government, and their rapidly
increasing empire. But, however this might have been,
the conquest of Greece precluded both the process and
the necessity of it ; and the Roman stage at once pre-
sented imitations or translations of the Greek drama.
This continued till the perfect establishment of Chris-
tianity. Some attempts, indeed, were made to adapt
the persons of Scriptural or ecclesiastical history to the
drama ; and sacred plays, it is probable, were not unknown
in Constantinople under the emperors of the East. The
first of the kind is, I believe, the only one preserved, —
Progress of the Drama 21
namely, the Xpiffrog udffx^v, or, " Christ in his suffer-
ings," by Gregory Nazianzen, — possibly written in con-
sequence of the prohibition of profane literature to the
Christians by the apostate Julian.^ In the West, however,
the enslaved and debauched Roman world became too
barbarous for any theatrical exhibitions more refined
than those of pageants and chariot-races ; while the
spirit of Christianity, which in its most corrupt form
still breathed general humanity, whenever controversies
of faith were not concerned, had done away the cruel
combats of the gladiators, and the loss of the distant
provinces prevented the possibility of exhibiting the
engagements of wild beasts.
I pass, therefore, at once to the feudal ages which
soon succeeded, confining my observation to this country ;
though, indeed, the same remark with very few alterations
will apply to all the other states, into which the great
empire was broken. Ages of darkness succeeded ; —
not, indeed, the darkness of Russia or of the barbarous
lands unconquered by Rome ; for from the time of
Honorius to the destruction of Constantinople and the
consequent introduction of ancient literature into Europe,
there was a continued succession of individual intellects ;
— the golden chain was never wholly broken, though
the connecting links were often of baser metal. A dark
cloud, like another sky, covered the entire cope of heaven,
— but in this place it thinned away, and white stains
of light showed a half eclipsed star behind it, — in that
place it was rent asunder, and a star passed across the
opening in all its brightness, and then vanished. Such
stars exhibited themselves only ; surrounding objects
did not partake of their light. There were deep wells
of knowledge, but no fertilizing rills and rivulets. For
the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out
of which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew,
as if there had been none before it. And yet it is not
undelightful to contemplate the eduction of good from
evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our countrymen
was the efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama ;
and the preceding darkness and the returning light were
alike necessary in order to the creation of a Shakspeare.
A.D. 363. But I believe the prevailing opinion amongst scholars now is, that tht
'Kpiarbs lldo-xwJ' is not genuine. £d.
22 Progress of the Drama
The drama re-commenced in England, as it first began
in Greece, in religion. The people were not able to read,
— the priesthood were unwilling that they should read ;
and yet their own interest compelled them not to leave
the people wholly ignorant of the great events of sacred
history. They did that, therefore, by scenic repre-
sentations, which in after ages it has been attempted
to do in Roman Catholic countries by pictures. They
presented Mysteries, and often at great expense ; and
reliques of this system still remain in the south of Europe,
and indeed throughout Italy, where at Christmas the
convents and the great nobles rival each other in the
scenic representation of the birth of Christ and its circum-
stances. I heard two instances mentioned to me at
different times, one in Sicily and the other in Rome,
of noble devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said
to have commenced in the extravagant expense which
had been incurred in presenting the prcesepe or manger.
But these Mysteries, in order to answer their design,
must not only be instructive, but entertaining ; and
as, when they became so, the people began to take pleasure
in acting them themselves — in interloping, — (against
which the priests seem to have fought hard and yet in
vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the
most awful personations ; and whatever the subject
might be, however sublime, however pathetic, yet the
Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine antecessors of
Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component
parts. I have myself a piece of this kind, which I tran-
scribed a few years ago at Helmstadt, in Germany, on
the education of Eve's children, in which after the fall
and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof
of his reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to
catechise the children, — who with a noble contempt of
chronology are all brought together from Abel to Noah.
The good children say the ten Commandments, the
Belief and the Lord's Prayer ; but Cain and his rout,
after he had received a box on the ear for not taking off
his hat, and afterwards offering his left hand, is prompted
by the devil so to blunder in the Lord's Prayer as to
reverse the petitions and say it backward ! ^
1 See vol. i. p. 76, where this is told more at length and attributed to Hans Sachs,
Ed. Vol. ii. pp. 16, 17, 2nQ edit. S. C
Progress of the Drama 23
" Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like
these, however innocent. As historical documents they
are valuable ; but I am sensible that what I can read
with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot without
inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue.
Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I
say that I cannot agree with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors
did not perceive the ludicrous in these things, or that
they paid no separate attention to the serious and comic
parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For
what purpose should the Vice leap upon the Devil's
back and belabour him, but to produce this separate
attention ? The people laughed heartily, no doubt.
Nor can I conceive any meaning attached to the words
" separate attention," that is not fully answered by
one part of an exhibition exciting seriousness or pity,
and the other raising mirth and loud laughter. That
they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it
is the very essence of that system of Christian poly-
theism, which in all its essentials is now fully as gross
in Spain, in Sicily and the south of Italy, as it ever was
in England in the days of Henry VI. — (nay, more so,
for a Wicliffe had not then appeared only, but scattered
the good seed widely,) it is an essential part, I say, of
that system to draw the mind whoUy from its own inward
whispers and quiet discriminations, and to habituate
the conscience to pronounce sentence in every case accord-
ing to the established verdicts of the church and the
casuists. I have looked through volume after volume
of the most approved casuists, — and still I find dis-
quisitions whether this or that act is right, and under
what circumstances, to a minuteness that makes reason-
ing ridiculous, and of a callous and unnatural immodesty,
to which none but a monk could harden himself, who
has been stripped of all the tender charities of life, yet
is goaded on to make war against them by the unsubdued
hauntings of our meaner nature, even as dogs are said
to get the hydrophobia from excessive thirst. I fully
believe that our ancestors laughed as heartily, as their
posterity do at Grimaldi ; — and not having been told that
they would be punished for laughing, they thought it very
innocent ; — and if their priest had left out murder in the
catalogue of their prohibitions (as indeed they did under
24 Progress of the Drama
certain circumstances of heresy), the greater part of them,
— the moral instincts common to all men having been
smothered and kept from development, — would have
thought as httle of murder.
However this may be, the necessity of at once instructing
and gratifying the people produced the great distinction
between the Greek and the English theatres ; — for to this
we must attribute the origin of tragi-comedy, or a repre-
sentation of human events more lively, nearer the truth,
and permitting a larger field of moral instruction, a more
ample exhibition of the recesses of the human heart, under
all the trials and circumstances that most concern us, than
WcLS known or guessed at by ^schylus, Sophocles, of
Euripides ; — and at the same time we learn to account
for, and — relatively to the author — perceive the necessity
of, the Fool or Clown or both, as the substitutes of the
Vice and the Devil, which our ancestors had been so
accustomed to see in every exhibition of the stage, that
they could not feel any performance perfect without them.
Even to this day in Italy, every opera — (even Metastasio
obeyed the claim throughout) — must have six characters,
generally two pairs of cross lovers, a tyrant and a confidant,
or a father and two confidants, themselves lovers ; — and
when a new opera appears, it is the universal fashion to
ask — which is the tyrant, which the lover ? &c.
It is the especial honour of Christianity, that in its worst
and most corrupted form it cannot wholly separate itself
from morality ; — whereas the other religions in their best
form (I do not include Mohammedanism, which is only an
anomalous corruption of Christianity, like Swedenbor-
gianism,) have no connection with it. The very imper-
sonation of moral evil under the name of Vice, facilitated
all other impersonations ; and hence we see that the
Mysteries were succeeded by Moralities, or dialogues and
plots of allegorical personages. Again, some character in
real history had become so famous, so proverbial, as Nero
for instance, that they were introduced instead of the moral
quahty, for which they were so noted ; — and in this mannei
the stage was moving on to the absolute production of
heroic and comic real characters, when the restoration of
literature, followed by the ever-blessed Reformation, let in
upon the kingdom not only new knowledge, but new motive.
A useful rivalry commenced between the metropolis on the
Progress of the Drama 25
one hand, the residence, independently of the court and
nobles, of the most active and stirring spirits who had not
been regularly educated, or who, from mischance or other-
wise, had forsaken the beaten track of preferment, — and
the universities on the other. The latter prided them-
selves on their closer approximation to the ancient rules
and ancient regularity — taking the theatre of Greece, or
rather its dim reflection, the rhetorical tragedies of the
poet Seneca, as a perfect ideal, without any critical
collation of the times, origin, or circumstances ; — whilst,
in the mean time, the popular writers, who could not
and would not abandon what they had found to delight
their countrymen sincerely, and not merely from in-
quiries first put to the recollection of rules, and answered
in the affirmative, as if it had been an arithmetical sum,
did yet borrow from the scholars whatever they advan-
tageously could, consistently with their own peculiar
means of pleasing.
And here let me pause for a moment's contemplation
of this interesting subject.
We call, for we see and feel, the swan and the dove
both transcendantly beautiful. As absurd as it would
be to institute a comparison between their separate
claims to beauty from any abstract rule common to
both, without reference to the life and being of the animals
themselves, — or as if, having first seen the dove, we
abstracted its outlines, gave them a false generalization,
called them the principles or ideal of bird-beauty, and
then proceeded to criticise the swan or the eagle ; —
not less absurd is it to pass judgment on the works of a
poet on the mere ground that they have been called by the
same class-name with the works of other poets in other
times and circumstances, or on any ground, indeed, save
that of their inappropriateness to their own end and being,
their want of significance, as symbols or physiognomy.
O ! few have there been among critics, who have
followed with the eye of the imagination the imperishable
yet ever wandering spirit of poetry through its various
metempsychoses, and consequent metamorphoses ; — or
who have rejoiced in the light of clear perception at
beholding with each new birth, with each rare avatar,
the human race frame to itself a new body, by assimi-
lating materials of nourishment out of its new circum-
26 Progress of the Drama
stances, and work for itself new organs of power appro-
priate to the new sphere of its motion and activity !
I have before spoken of the Romance, or the language
formed out of the decayed Roman and the Northern
tongues ; and comparing it with the Latin, we find it
less perfect in simplicity and relation — the privileges of
a language formed by the mere attraction of homo-
geneous parts ; — but yet more rich, more expressive
and various, as one formed by more obscure affinities
out of a chaos of apparently heterogeneous atoms. As
more than a metaphor, — as an analogy of this, I have
named the true genuine modern poetry the romantic ;
and the works of Shakspeare are romantic poetry reveal-
ing itself in the drama. If the tragedies of Sophocles
are in the strict sense of the word tragedies, and the
comedies of Aristophanes comedies, we must emancipate
ourselves from a false association arising from misapplied
names, and find a new word for the plays of Shakspeare.
For they are, in the ancient sense, neither tragedies nor
comedies, nor both in one, — but a different genus, diverse
in kind, and not merely different in degree. They may
be called romantic dramas, or dramatic romances.
A deviation from the simple forms and unities of the
ancient stage is an essential principle, and, of course,
an appropriate excellence, of the romantic drama. For
these unities were to a great extent the natural form of
that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the
representation of which was addressed pre-eminently to
the outward senses ; — and though the fable, the language
and the characters appealed to the reason rather than to
the mere understanding, inasmuch as they supposed
an ideal state rather than referred to an existing reality,
— yet it was a reason which was obliged to accommodate
itself to the senses, and so far became a sort of more
elevated understanding. On the other hand, the roman-
tic poetry — the Shakspearian drama — appealed to the
imagination rather than to the senses, and to the reason
as contemplating our inward nature, and the workings
of the passions in their most retired recesses. But the
reason, as reason, is independent of time and space ; it
has nothing to do with them : and hence the certainties
of reason have been called eternal truths. As for example
— the endless properties of the circle : — what connection
Progress of the Drama 27
have they with this or that age, with this or that country ?
— The reason is aloof from time and space ; the imagination
is an arbitrary controller over both ; — and if only the
poet have such power of exciting our internal emotions
as to make us present to the scene in imagination chiefly,
he acquires the right and privilege of using time and
space as they exist in imagination, and obedient only
to the laws by which the imagination itself acts. These
laws it will be my object and aim to point out as the
examples occur, which illustrate them. But here let
me remark what can never be too often reflected on by
all who would intelligently study the works either of
the Athenian dramatists, or of Shakspeare, that the
very essence of the former consists in the sternest separa-
tion of the diverse in kind and the disparate in the degree,
whilst the latter delights in interlacing, by a rainbow-
like transfusion of hues, the one with the other.
And here it will be necessary to say a few words on
the stage and on stage-illusion.
A theatre, in the widest sense of the word, is the general
term for all places of amusement through the ear or eye,
in which men assemble in order to be amused by some
entertainment presented to all at the same time and in
common. Thus, an old Puritan divine says : — " Those
who attend public worship and sermons only to amuse
themselves, make a theatre of the church, and turn
God's house into the devil's. Theatra cedes diabolola-
triccB." The most important and dignified species of
this gemts is, doubtless, the stage, {res theatralis histri-
onic a), which, in addition to the generic definition above
given, may be characterized in its idea, or according to
what it does, or ought to, aim at, as a combination of
several or of all the fine arts in an harmonious whole,
having a distinct end of its own, to which the peculiar
end of each of the component arts, taken separately,
is made subordinate and subservient, — that, namely,
of imitating reality — whether external things, actions,
or passions — under a semblance of reality. Thus, Claude
imitates a landscape at sunset, but only as a picture ;
while a forest-scene is not presented to the spectators
as a picture, but as a forest ; and though, in the full
sense of the word, we are no more deceived by the one
than by the other, yet are our feelings very differently
28 Progress of the Drama
affected ; and the pleasure derived from the one is not
composed of the same elements as that afforded by the
other, even on the supposition that the quantum of
both were equal. In the former, a picture, it is a
condition of all genuine delight that we should not be
deceived ; in the latter, stage-scenery, (inasmuch as its
principal end is not in or for itself, as is the case in a
picture, but to be an assistance and means to an end
out of itself) its very purpose is to produce as much
illusion as its nature permits. These, and all other
stage presentations, are to produce a sort of temporary
half-faith, which the spectator encourages in himself
and supports by a voluntary contribution on his own
part, because he knows that it is at all times in his power
to see the thing as it really is. I have often observed
that little children are actually deceived by stage-scenery,
never by pictures ; though even these produce an effect
on their impressible minds, which they do not on the
minds of adults. The child, if strongly impressed, does
not indeed positively think the picture to be the reality ;
but yet he does not think the contrary. As Sir George
Beaumont was shewing me a very fine engraving from
Rubens, representing a storm at sea without any vessel
or boat introduced, my little boy, then about five years
old, came dancing and singing into the room, and all
at once (if I may so say) tumbled in upon the print. He
instantly started, stood silent and motionless, with the
strongest expression, first of wonder and then of grief
in his eyes and countenance, and at length said, " And
where is the ship ? But that is sunk, and the men are
all drowned ! " still keeping his eyes fixed on the print.
Now what pictures are to little children, stage illusion
is to men, provided they retain any part of the child's
sensibility ; except, that in the latter instance, the
suspension of the act of comparison, which permits this
sort of negative belief, is somewhat more assisted by the
will, than in that of a child respecting a picture.
The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things
consists — not in the mind's judging it to be a forest, but,
in its remission of the judgment that it is not a forest.
And this subject of stage-illusion is so important, and so
many practical errors and false criticisms may arise, and
indeed have arisen, either from reasoning on it as actual
Progress of the Drama 29
delusion, (the strange notion, on which the French critics
built up their theory, and on which the French poets
justify the construction of their tragedies), or from deny-
ing it altogether, (which seems the end of Dr. Johnson's
reasoning, and which, as extremes meet, would lead to the
very same consequences, by excluding whatever would
not be judged probable by us in our coolest state of feeling,
with all our faculties in even balance), that these few
remarks will, I hope, be pardoned, if they should serve
either to explain or to illustrate the point. For not only
are we never absolutely deluded — or any thing like it,
but the attempt to cause the highest delusion possible
to beings in their senses sitting in a theatre, is a gross
fault, incident only to low minds, which, feeling that they
cannot affect the heart or head permanently, endeavour
to call forth the momentary affections. There ought
never to be more pain than is compatible with co-existing
pleasure, and to be amply repaid by thought.
Shakspeare found the infant stage demanding an
intermixture of ludicrous character as imperiously as
that of Greece did the chorus, and high language accordant.
And there are many advantages in this ; — a greater
assimilation to nature, a greater scope of power, more
truths, and more feelings ; — the effects of contrast, as
in Lear and the Fool ; and especially this, that the true
language of passion becomes sufficiently elevated by your
having previously heard, in the same piece, the lighter
conversation of men under no strong emotion. The
very nakedness of the stage, too, was advantageous, —
for the drama thence became something between recita-
tion and a re-presentation ; and the absence or paucity
of scenes allowed a freedom from the laws of unity of
place and unity of time, the observance of which must
either confine the drama to as few subjects as may be
counted on the fingers, or involve gross improbabilities,
far more striking than the violation would have caused.
Thence, also, wels precluded the danger of a false ideal,
— of aiming at more than what is possible on the whole.
What play of the ancients, with reference to their ideal,
does not hold out more glaring absurdities than any in
Shakspeare ? On the Greek plan a man could more
easily be a poet than a dramatist ; upon our plan more
easily a dramatist than a poet.
30 The Drama Generally
THE DRAMA GENERALLY, AND
PUBLIC TASTE.
Unaccustomed to address such an audience, and having
lost by a long interval of confinement the advantages
of my former short schooling, I had miscalculated in
my last Lecture the proportion of my matter to my time,
and by bad economy and unskilful management, the
several heads of my discourse failed in making the entire
performance correspond with the promise publicly circu-
lated in the weekly annunciation of the subjects, to be
treated. It would indeed have been wiser in me, and
perhaps better on the whole, if I had caused my Lectures
to be announced only as continuations of the main subject.
But if I be, as perforce I must be, gratified by the recollec-
tion of whatever has appeared to give you pleasure, I
am conscious of something better, though less flattering,
a sense of unfeigned gratitude for your forbearance with
my defects. Like affectionate guardians, you see with-
out disgust the awkwardness, and witness with sym-
pathy the growing pains, of a youthful endeavour, and
look forward with a hope, which is its own reward, to
the contingent results of practice — to its intellectual
maturity.
In my last address I defined poetry to be the art,
or whatever better term our language may afford, of
representing external nature and human thoughts, both
relatively to human affections, so as to cause the pro-
duction of as great immediate pleasure in each part,
as is compatible with the largest possible sum of pleasure
on the whole. Now this definition applies equally to
painting and music as to poetry ; and in truth the term
poetry is alike applicable to all three. The vehicle alone
constitutes the difference ; and the term * poetry ' is
rightly applied by eminence to measured words, only
because the sphere of their action is far wider, the power
of giving permanence to them much more certain, and
incomparably greater the facility, by which men, not
defective by nature or disease, may be enabled to derive
habitual pleasure and instruction from them. On my
mentioning these considerations to a painter of great
and Public Taste 31
genius, who had been, from a most honourable enthusiasm,
extolling his own art, he was so struck with their truth,
that he exclaimed, " I want no other arguments ; —
poetry, that is, verbal poetry, must be the greatest ;
all that proves final causes in the world, proves this ;
it would be shocking to think otherwise ! " — And in
truth, deeply, O ! far more than words can express,
as I venerate the Last Judgment and the Prophets of
Michel Angelo Buonaroti, — yet the very pain which I
repeatedly felt as I lost myself in gazing upon them,
the painful consideration that their having been painted
in fresco was the sole cause that they had not been aban-
doned to all the accidents of a dangerous transportation
to a distant capital, and that the same caprice, which
made the Neapolitan soldiery destroy all the exquisite
masterpieces on the walls of the church of the Trinitado
Monte, after the retreat of their antagonist barbarians,
might as easily have made vanish the rooms and open
gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable
wonders of the sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel,
forced upon my mind the reflection ; How grateful
the human race ought to be that the works of Euclid,
Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakspeare, are not subjected
to similar contingencies, — that they and their fellows,
and the great, though inferior, peerage of undying in-
tellect, are secured ; — secured even from a second irruption
of Goths and Vandals, in addition to many other safe-
guards, by the vast empire of English language, laws,
and religion founded in America, through the overflow
of the power and the virtue of my country ; — and that
now the great and certain works of genuine fame can
only cease to act for mankind, when men themselves
cease to be men, or when the planet on which they exist,
shall have altered its relations, or have ceased to be.
Lord Bacon, in the language of the gods, if I may use an
Homeric phrase, has expressed a similar thought : —
Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man
excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts ; that by
learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where
in body he cannot come, and the like ; let us conclude with the
dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that where-
unto man's nature doth most aspire, which is, immortality or con-
tinuance : for to this tendeth generation, and raising of houses and
families ; to this tend buildings, foundations, and monuments ;
32 The Drama Generally
to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and
in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how
far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than
the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses
of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without
the loss of a syllable or letter ; during which time, infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished ? It is
not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar ; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later
years ; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose
of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and know-
ledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and
capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called
images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds
of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in
succeeding ages : so that, if the invention of the ship was thought
so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place,
and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their
fruits ; how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships,
pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to
participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one
of the other ? ^
But let us now consider what the drama should be.
And first, it is not a copy, but an imitation, of nature.
This is the universal principle of the fine arts. In all
well laid out grounds what delight do we feel from that
balance and antithesis of feelings and thoughts ! How
natural ! we say ; — but the very wonder that caused
the exclamation, implies that we perceived art at the
same moment. We catch the hint from nature itself.
Whenever in mountains or cataracts we discover a like-
ness to any thing artificial which yet we know is not
artificial — what pleasure ! And so it is in appearances
known to be artificial, which appear to be natural. This
applies in due degrees, regulated by steady good sense,
from a clump of trees to the Paradise Lost or Othello.
It would be easy to apply it to painting and even, though
with greater abstraction of thought, and by more subtle
yet equally just analogies — to music. But this belongs
to others ; suffice it that one great principle is common
to all the fine arts, a principle which probably is the
condition of all consciousness, without which we should
feel and imagine only by discontinuous moments, and
be plants or brute animals instead of men ; — I mean
that ever-varying balance, or balancing, of images, notions,
1 Advancement of Learning, book i, sub fine.
and Public Taste 33
or feelings, conceived as in opposition to each other ;
— in short, the perception of identity and contrariety ;
the least degree of which constitutes likeness, the greatest
absolute di^erence ; but the infinite gradations between
these two form all the play and all the interest of our
intellectual and moral being, till it leads us to a feeJing
and an object more awful than it seems to me compatible
with even the present subject to utter aloud, though
I am most desirous to suggest it. For there alone are
all things at once different and the same ; there alone,
as the principle of all things, does distinction exist un-
aided by division ; there are will and reason, succession
of time and unmoving eternity, infinite change and
ineffable rest ! —
Return Alpheus ! the dread voice is past
Which shrunk thy streams !
-Thou honour'd flood.
Smooth-flowing Avon, crown'd with vocal reeds.
That strain I heard, was of a higher mood I —
But now my voice proceeds.
We may divide a dramatic poet's characteristics before
we enter into the component merits of any one work,
and with reference only to those things which are to be
the materials of all, into language, passion, and character ;
always bearing in mind that these must act and react on
each other, — the language inspired by the passion, and
the language and the passion modified and differenced
by the character. To the production of the highest
excellencies in these three, there are requisite in the
mind of the author ; — good sense ; talent ; sensibility ;
imagination ; — and to the perfection of a work we should
add two faculties of lesser importance, yet necessary
for the ornaments and foliage of the column and the roof
— fancy and a quick sense of beauty.
As to language ; — it cannot be supposed that the poet
should make his characters say all that they would, or
that, his whole drama considered, each scene, or paragraph
should be such as, on cool examination, we can conceive
it likely that men in such situations would say, in that
order, or with that perfection. And yet, according to
my feelings, it is a very inferior kind of poetry, in which,
as in the French tragedies, men are made to talk in a
B
34 The Drama Generally
style which few indeed even of the wittiest can be supposed
to converse in, and which both is, and on a moment's
reflection appears to be, the natural produce of the hot-
bed of vanity, namely, the closet of an author, who is
actuated originally by a desire to. excite surprise and
wonderment at his own superiority to other men, —
instead of having felt so deeply on certain subjects, or
in consequence of certain imaginations, as to make it
almost a necessity of his nature to seek for sympathy,
— no doubt, wdth that honourable desire of permanent
action which distinguishes genius. — Where then is the
difference ? — In this that each part should be propor-
tionate, though the whole may be perhaps impossible.
At all events, it should be compatible with sound sense
and logic in the mind of the poet himself.
It is to be lamented that we judge of books by books,
instead of referring what we read to our own experience.
One great use of books is to make their contents a motive
for observation. The German tragedies have in some
respects been justly ridiculed. In them the dramatist
often becomes a novelist in his directions to the actors,
and thus degrades tragedy into pantomime. Yet still
the consciousness of the poet's mind must be diffused
over that of the reader or spectator ; but he himself,
according to his genius, elevates us, and by being always
in keeping, prevents us from perceiving any strangeness,
though we feel great exultation. Many different kinds
of style may be admirable, both in different men, and in
different parts of the same poem.
See the different language which strong feelings may
justify in Shylock, and learn from Shakspeare's conduct
of that character the terrible force of every plain and
calm diction, when known to proceed from a resolved and
impassioned man.
It is especially with reference to the drama, and its
characteristics in any given nation, or at any particular
period, that the dependence of genius on the public taste
becomes a matter of the deepest importance. I do not
mean that taste which springs merely from caprice or
fashionable imitation, and which, in fact, genius can,
and by degrees will, create for itself ; but that which
arises out of wide-grasping and heart-enrooted causes,
which is epidemic, and in the very air that all breathe.
and Public Taste 35
This it is which kills, or withers, or corrupts. Socrates,
indeed, might walk arm and arm with Hygeia, whilst
pestilence, with a thousand furies running to and fro,
and clashing against each other in a complexity and
agglomeration of horrors, was shooting her darts of fire
and venom all around him. Even such was Milton ;
yea, and such, in spite of all that has been babbled by
his critics in pretended excuse for his damning, because
for them too profound, excellencies, — such was Shak-
speare. But alas ! the exceptions prove the rule. For
who will dare to force his way out of the crowd, — not of
the mere vulgar, — but of the vain and banded aristocracy
of intellect, and presume to join the almost supernatural
beings that stand by themselves aloof ?
Of this diseased epidemic influence there are two forms
especially preclusive of tragic worth. The first is the
necessary growth of a sense and love of the ludicrous,
and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative power, —
an inflammation produced by cold and weakness, —
which in the boldest bursts of passion will lie in wait for a
jeer at any phrase, that may have an accidental coinci-
dence in the mere words with something base or trivial.
For instance, — to express woods, not on a plain, but
clothing a hiU, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river,
or the sea, — the trees rising one above another, as the
spectators in an ancient theatre, — I know no other word
in our language, (bookish and pedantic terms out of the
question,) but hanging woods, the sylvcB superimpen-
dentes of Catullus ; ^ yet let some wit call out in a slang
tone, — " the gallows ! " and a peal of laughter would
damn the play. Hence it is that so many dull pieces have
had a decent run, only because nothing unusual above,
or absurd below, mediocrity furnished an occasion, — a
spark for the explosive materials collected behind the
orchestra. But it would take a volume of no ordinary
size, however laconically the sense were expressed, if it
were meant to instance the effects, and unfold all the
causes, of this disposition upon the moral, intellectual,
and even physical character of a people, with its influences
on domestic life and individual deportment. A good
document upon this subject would be the history of Paris
1 Confestim Peneos adest, viridantia Tempe,
Tempae, quae cingunt sylvae superimpendentes.
£pi^h. Pel. et Tk. 3S6.
36 The Drama Generally
society and of French, that is, Parisian, Hterature from
the commencement of the latter half of the reign of
Louis XIV. to that of Buonaparte, compared with the
preceding philosophy and poetry even of Frenchmen
themselves.
The second form, or more properly, perhaps, another
distinct cause, of this diseased disposition is matter of
exultation to the philanthropist and philosopher, and of
regret to the poet, the painter, and the statuary alone,
and to them only as poets, painters, and statuaries ; —
namely, the security, the comparative equability, and
ever increasing sameness of human life. Men are now so
seldom thrown into wild circumstances, and violences of
excitement, that the language of such states, the laws of
association of feeling with thought, the starts and strange
far-flights of the assimilative power on the slightest and
least obvious likeness presented by thoughts, words, or
objects, — these are all judged of by authority, not by
actual experience, — by what men have been accustomed
to regard as symbols of these states, and not the natural
sjmibols, or self-manifestations of them.
Even so it is in the language of man, and in that of
nature. The sound sun, or the figures s, u, n, are purely
arbitrary modes of recalling the object, and for visual
mere objects they are not only sufficient, but have infinite
advantages from their very nothingness per se. But the
language of nature is a subordinate Logos, that was in the
beginning, and was with the thing it represented, and was
the thing it represented.
Now the language of Shakspeare, in his Lear for instance,
is a something intermediate between these two ; or rather
it is the former blended with the latter, — the arbitrary,
not merely recalling the cold notion of the thing, but
expressing the reality of it, and, as arbitrary language is
an heir-loom of the human race, being itself a part of that
which it manifests. What shall I deduce from the pre-
ceding positions ? Even this, — the appropriate, the never
to be too much valued advantage of the theatre, if only
the actors were what we know they have been, — a delight-
ful, yet most effectual remedy for this dead palsy of the
public mind. What would appear mad or ludicrous in a
book, when presented to the senses under the form of
reality, and with the truth of nature, supplies a species of
and Public Taste 37
actual experience. This is indeed the special privilege
of a great actor over a great poet. No part was ever
played in perfection, but nature justified herself in the
hearts of all her children, in what state soever they were,
short of absolute moral exhaustion, or downright stupidity.
There is no time given to ask questions, or to pass judg-
ments ; v/e are taken by storm, and, though in the histri-
onic art many a clumsy counterfeit, by caricature of one
or two features, may gain applause as a fine likeness, yet
never was the very thing rejected as a counterfeit. O !
when I think of the inexhaustible mine of virgin treasure
in our Shakspeare, that I have been almost daily reading
him since I was ten years old, — that the thirty inter-
vening years have been unintermittingly and not fruit-
lessly employed in the study of the Greek, Latin, English,
Italian, Spanish and German helle lettrists, and the last
fifteen years in addition, far more intensely in the analysis
of the laws of life and reason as they exist in man, — and
that upon every step I have made forward in taste, in
acquisition of facts from history or my own observation,
and in knowledge of the different laws of being and their
apparent exceptions, from accidental collision of disturbing
forces, — that at every new accession of information, after
every successful exercise of meditation, and every fresh
presentation of experience, I have unfailingly discovered
a proportionate increase of wisdom and intuition in
Shakspeare ; — when I know this, and know too, that by
a conceivable and possible, though hardly to be expected,
arrangement of the British theatres, not all, indeed, but
a large, a very large, proportion of this indefinite all —
(round which no comprehension has yet drawn the line
of circumscription, so as to say to itself, *I have seen the
whole') — might be sent into the heads and hearts — into
the very souls of the mass of mankind, to whom, except
by this living comment and interpretation, it must remain
for ever a sealed volume, a deep well without a wheel or
a windlass ; — it seems to me a pardonable enthusiasm
to steal away from sober likelihood, and share in so rich
a feast in the faery world of possibility ! Yet even in
the grave cheerfulness of a circumspect hope, much, very
much, might be done ; enough, assuredly, to furnish a
kind and strenuous nature with ample motives for the
attempt to effect what may be effected.
38 Shakspeare, a Poet Generally
SHAKSPEARE, A POET GENERALLY.
Clothed in radiant armour, and authorized by titles sure
and manifold, as a poet, Shakspeare came forward to
demand the throne of fame, as the dramatic poet of
England. His excellences compelled even his contem-
poraries to seat him on that throne, although there were
giants in those days contending for the same honour.
Hereafter I would fain endeavour to make out the title
of the English drama as created by, and existing in, Shak-
speare, and its right to the supremacy of dramatic excel-
lence in general. But he had shown himself a poet, pre-
viously to his appearance as a dramatic poet ; and had
no Lear, no Othello, no Henry IV., no Twelfth Night ever
appeared, we must have admitted that Shakspeare pos-
sessed the chief, if not every, requisite of a poet, — deep
feeling and exquisite sense of beauty, both as exhibited
to the eye in the combinations of form, and to the ear in
sweet and appropriate melody ; that these feelings were
under the command of his own will ; that in his very first
productions he projected his mind out of his own particular
being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way
connected with himself, except by force of contemplation
and that sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes
that, on which it meditates. To this must be added that
affectionate love of nature and natural objects, without
which no man could have observed so steadily, or painted
so truly and passionately, the very minutest beauties of
the external world : —
And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,
Mark the poor wretch ; to overshoot his troubles,
How he outruns the wind, and with what care,
He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles :
The many musits through the which he goes
Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.
Sometimes he runs among the flock of sheep,
To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell ;
And sometime where earth-delving conies keep.
To stop the loud pursuers in their ^'■ell ;
And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer :
Danger deviseth shifts, wit waits on fear.
For there his smell with others' being mmgled,
The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt.
Ceasing their clamorous cry, till they have singled.
Shakspeare, a Poet Generally 39
With much ado, the cold fault cleanly out,
Then do they spend their mouths ; echo replies,
As if another chase were in the skies.
By this poor Wat far off, upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear.
To hearken if his foes pursue him still :
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear,
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell.
Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn, and return, indenting with the way :
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch,
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.
For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low, never relieved by any.
Venus and Adonis.
And the preceding description : —
But lo ! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud, &c.
is much more admirable, but in parts less fitted for quota-
tion.
Moreover Shakspeare had shown that he possessed
fancy, considered as the faculty of bringing together
images dissimilar in the main by some one point or more
of likeness, as in such a passage as this : —
Full gently now she takes him by the hand,
A lily prisoned in a jail of snow.
Or ivory in an alabaster band :
So white a friend ingirts so white a foe ! Ih.
And still mounting the intellectual ladder, he had as
unequivocally proved the indwelling in his mind of im-
agination, or the power by which one image or feeling is
made to modify many others, and by a sort of fusion to
force many into one ; — that which afterwards showed
itself in such might and energy in Lear, where the deep
anguish of a father spreads the feeling of ingratitude and
cruelty over the very elements of heaven ; — and which,
combining many circumstances into one moment of con-
sciousness, tends to produce that ultimate end of all
human thought and human feeling, unity, and thereby
the reduction of the spirit to its principle and fountain,
who is alone truly one. Various are the workings of this
the greatest faculty of the human mind, both passionate
40 Shakspeare, a Poet Generally
and tranquil. In its tranquil and purely pleasurable
operation, it acts chiefly by creating out of many things,
as they would have appeared in the description of an
ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned succession, a
oneness, even as nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon
us, when we open our eyes upon an extended prospect.
Thus the flight of Adonis in the dusk of the evening : —
Look ! how a bright star shooteth from the sky ;
So glides he in the night from Venus' eye !
How many images and feelings are here brought to-
gether without effort and without discord, in the beauty
of Adonis, the rapidity of his flight, the yearning, yet
hopelessness, of the enamoured gazer, while a shadowy
ideal character is thrown over the whole ! Or this power
acts by impressing the stamp of humanity, and of human
feelings, on inanimate or mere natural objects : —
Lo ! here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty,
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.
Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of the reader
as to make him almost lose the consciousness of words, —
to make him see every thing flashed, as Wordsworth has
grandly and appropriately said, —
Flashed upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude ; —
and this without exciting any painful or laborious atten-
tion, without any anatomy of description, (a fault not
uncommon in descriptive poetry) — but with the sweet-
ness and easy movement of nature. This energy is an
absolute essential of poetry, and of itself would constitute
a poet, though not one of the highest class ; — it is, however,
a most hopeful S37mptom, and the Venus and Adonis is
one continued specimen of it.
In this beautiful poem there is an endless activity of
thought in all the possible associations of thought with
thought, thought with feeling, or with words, of feelings
with feelings, and of words with words.
Shakspeare, a Poet Generally 41
Even as the sun, with purple-colour' d face.
Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase :
Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn.
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-faced suitor 'gins to woo him.
Remark the humanizing imagery and circumstances of
the first two lines, and the activity of thought in the play
of words in the fourth line. The whole stanza presents at
once the time, the appearance of the morning, and the two
persons distinctly characterized, and in six simple verses
puts the reader in possession of the whole argument of the
poem.
Over one arm the lusty courser's rein.
Under the other was the tender boy.
Who blush' d and pouted in a dull disdain.
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy.
She red and hot, as coals of glowing fire.
He red for shame, but frosty to desire : —
This stanza and the two following afford good instances
of that poetic power, which I mentioned above, of making
every thing present to the imagination — both the forms,
and the passions which modify those forms, either actually,
as in the representations of love, or anger, or other human
affections ; or imaginatively, by the different manner in
which inanimate objects, or objects unimpassioned them-
selves, are caused to be seen by the mind in moments of
strong excitement, and according to the kind of the ex-
citement,— whether of jealousy, or rage, or love, in the only
appropriate sense of the word, or of the lower impulses of
our nature, or finally of the poetic feeling itself. It is,
perhaps, chiefly in the power of producing and reproduc-
ing the latter that the poet stands distinct.
The subject of the Venus and Adonis is unpleasing ;
but the poem itself is for that very reason the more illustra-
tive of Shakspeare. There are men who can write passages
of deepest pathos and even sublimity on circumstances
personal to themselves and stimulative of their own pas-
sions ; but they are not, therefore, on this account poets.
Read that magnificent burst of woman's patriotism and
exultation, Deborah's song of victory ; it is glorious, but
nature is the poet there. It is quite another matter to
become all things and yet remain the same, — to make the
42 Shakspeare, a Poet Generally
changeful god be felt in the river, the lion and the flame ; —
this it is, that is the true imagination. Shakspeare writes
in this poem, as if he were of another planet, charming
you to gaze on the movements of Venus and Adonis, as
you would on the twinkling dances of two vernal butterflies.
Finally, in this poem and the Rape of Lucrece, Shak-
speare gave ample proof of his possession of a most pro-
found, energetic, and philosophical mind, without which
he might have pleased, but could not have been a great
dramatic poet. Chance and the necessity of his genius
combined to lead him to the drama his proper province :
in his conquest of which we should consider both the diffi-
culties which opposed him, and the advantages by which
he was assisted.
Shakspeare' s Judgment equal to his Genius.
Thus then Shakspeare appears, from his Venus and
Adonis and Rape of Lucrece alone, apart from all his
great works, to have possessed all the conditions of the
true poet. Let me now proceed to destroy, as far as may
be in my power, the popular notion that he was a great
dramatist by mere instinct, that he grew immortal in his
own despite, and sank below men of second or third-rate
power, when he attempted aught beside the drama —
even as bees construct their cells and manufacture their
honey to admirable perfection ; but would in vain attempt
to build a nest. Now this mode of reconciling a compelled
sense of inferiority with a feeling of pride, began in a few
pedants, who having read that Sophocles was the great
model of tragedy, and Aristotle the infallible dictator of
its rules, and finding that the Lear, Hamlet, Othello and
other master-pieces were neither in imitation of Sophocles,
nor in obedience to Aristotle, — and not having (with one
or two exceptions) the courage to affirm, that the delight
which their country received from generation to genera-
tion, in defiance of the alterations of circumstances and
habits, was wholly groundless, — took upon them, as a
happy medium and refuge, to talk of Shakspeare as a sort
of beautiful lusus natiirce, a delightful monster, — wild,
indeed, and without taste or judgment, but like the
inspired idiots so much venerated in the East, uttering,
Shakspeare, a Poet Generally 43
amid the strangest follies, the sublimest truths. In nine
places out of ten in which I find his awful name mentioned,
it is with some epithet of 'wild/ 'irregular,' 'pure child
of nature,* &c. If all this be true, we must submit to it;
though to a thinking mind it cannot but be painful to find
any excellence, merely human, thrown out of all human
analogy, and thereby leaving us neither rules for imita-
tion, nor motives to imitate ; — but if false, it is a dangerous
falsehood ; — for it affords a refuge to secret self-conceit,
— enables a vain man at once to escape his reader's
indignation by general swoln panegyrics, and merely by
his ipse dixit to treat, as contemptible, what he has not
intellect enough to comprehend, or soul to feel, without
assigning any reason, or referring his opinion to any
demonstrative principle ; — thus leaving Shakspeare as a
sort of grand Lama, adored indeed, and his very excre-
ments prized as relics, but with no authorit}^ or real
influence. I grieve that every late voluminous edition of
his works would enable me to substantiate the present
charge with a variety of facts one tenth of which would
of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every
critic, who has or has not made a collection of black
letter books — in itself a useful and respectable amuse-
ment,— puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and
strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge,
and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters
of Niagara ; and determines positively the greatness of
the cataract to be neither more nor less than his three-
ounce phial has been able to receive.
I think this a very serious subject. It is my earnest
desire — my passionate endeavour, — to enforce at various
times and by various arguments and instances the close
and reciprocal connexion of just taste with pure morality.
Without that acquaintance with the heart of man, or that
docility and childlike gladness to be made acquainted
with it, which those only can have, who dare look at their
own hearts — and that with a steadiness which religion
only has the power of reconciling with sincere humility ;
— without this, and the modesty produced by it, I am
deeply convinced that no man, however wide his erudition,
however patient his antiquarian researches, can possibly
understand, or be worthy of understanding, the writings
of Shakspeare.
44 Shakspeare, a Poet Generally
Assuredly that criticism of Shakspeare will alone be
genial which is reverential. The Englishman, who without
reverence, a proud and affectionate reverence, can utter
the name of William Shakspeare, stands disquahfied for
the ofi&ce of critic. He wants one at least of the very
senses, the language of which he is to employ, and will
discourse, at best, but as a blind man, while the whole
harmonious creation of light and shade with all its subtle
interchange of deepening and dissolving colours rises in
silence to the silent flat of the uprising Apollo. However
inferior in ability I may be to some who have followed me,
I own I am proud that I was the first in time who pubhcly
demonstrated to the full extent of the position, that the
supposed irregularity and extravagances of Shakspeare
were the mere dreams of a pedantry that arraigned the
eagle because it had not the dimensions of the swan. In
all the successive courses of lectures delivered by me, since
my first attempt at the Royal Institution, it has been, and
it still remains, my object, to prove that in aU points from
the most important to the most minute, the judgment of
Shakspeare is commensurate vv^ith his genius, — nay, that
his genius reveals itself in his judgment, as in its most
exalted form. And the more gladly do I recur to this
subject from the clear conviction, that to judge aright,
and with distinct consciousness of the grounds of our
judgment, concerning the works of Shakspeare, implies
the power and the means of judging rightly of aU other
works of intellect, those of abstract science alone excepted.
It is a painful truth that not only individuals, but even
whole nations, are ofttimes so enslaved to the habits of
their education and immediate circumstances, as not to
judge disinterestedly even on those subjects, the very
pleasure arising from which consists in its disinterested-
ness, namely, on subjects of taste and polite literature.
Instead of deciding concerning their own modes and
customs by any rule of reason, nothing appears rational,
becoming, or beautiful to them, but what coincides with
the peculiarities of their education. In this narrow circle,
individuals may attain to exquisite discrimination, as the
French critics have done in their own literature ; but a
true critic can no more be such without placing himself
on some central point, from which he may command the
whole, that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason.
Shakspeare, a Poet Generally 45
or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply
to each, — than an astronomer can explain the move-
ments of the solar system without taking his stand in the
sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend to produce
despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the
critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit and substance
of a work, something true in human nature itself, and
independent of all circumstances ; but in the mode of
applying it, he will estimate genius and judgment accord-
ing to the felicity with which the imperishable soul of
intellect shall have adapted itself to the age, the place,
and the existing manners. The error he will expose, Ues
in reversing this, and holding up the mere circumstances
as perpetual to the utter neglect of the power which can
alone animate them. For art cannot exist without, or
apart from, nature ; and what has man of his own to give
to his fellow man, but his own thoughts and feelings, and
his observations, so far as they are modified by his own
thoughts or feelings ?
Let me, then, once more submit this question to minds
emancipated alike from national, or party, or sectarian
prejudice : — Are the plays of Shakspeare works of rude
uncultivated genius, in which the splendour of the parts
compensates, if aught can compensate, for the barbarous
shapelessness and irregularity of the whole ? — Or is the
form equally admirable with the matter, and the judg-
ment of the great poet, not less deserving our wonder than
his genius ? — Or, again, to repeat the question in other
words : — Is Shakspeare a great dramatic poet on account
only of those beauties and excellences which he possesses
in common with the ancients, but with diminished claims
to our love and honour to the full extent of his differences
from them ? — Or are these very differences additional
proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of
living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism — of
free and rival originality as contra-distinguished from
servile imitation, or, more accurately, a blind copying of
effects, instead of a true imitation, of the essential prin-
ciples ? — Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius
to rules. No ! the comparative value of these rules is the
very cause to be tried. The spirit of poetry, like all other
living powers, must of necessity circumscribe itself by
rules, were it only to unite power with beauty. It must
46 Shakspeare, a Poet Generally
embody in order to reveal itself ; but a living body is oi
necessity an organized one ; and what is organization but
the connection of parts in and for a whole, so that each
part is at once end and means ? — This is no discovery of
criticism ; — it is a necessity of the human mind ; and all
nations have felt and obeyed it, in the invention of metre,
and measured sounds, as the vehicle and involucriim oi
poetry — itself a fellow-growth from the same life, — even
as the bark is to the tree !
No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form,
neither indeed is there any danger of this. As it must
not, so genius cannot, be lawless ; for it is even this that
constitutes it genius — the power of acting creatively under
laws of its ov/n origination. How then comes it that not
only single Zoili, but whole nations have combined in
unhesitating condemnation of our great dramatist, as a
sort of African nature, rich in beautiful monsters — as a
wild heath where islands of fertility look the greener from
the surrounding waste, where the loveliest plants now
shine out among unsightly weeds, and now are choked by
their parasitic growth, so intertwined that we cannot dis-
entangle the weed without snapping the flower ? — In this
statement I have had no reference to the vulgar abuse of
Voltaire,^ save as far as his charges are coincident with
the decisions of Shakspeare's own commentators and (so
they would tell you) almost idolatrous admirers. The trae
ground of the mistake lies in the confounding mechanical
regularity with organic form. The form is mechanic, when
on any given material we impress a pre-determined form,
not necessarily arising out of the properties of the material ;
— as when to a mass of wet clay we give whatever shape
we wish it to retain when hardened. The organic form,
on the other hand, is innate ; it shapes, as it developes,
itself from within, and the fulness of its development is
1 Take a slight specimen of it.
Je suis bien loin assurdment de justifier en tout la tragddie d'Haralet : c'est une piice
grassier e et bar bare, qui ne serait pas suf>portee par la plus vile populace de la I'rance
et de ritalie. Hamlei y devient fou au second acte, et sa maltressefolleau troisi^me ;
le prince tue le pere de sa maitresse, feignant de tuer un rat, et I'heroine se jette dans
la riviere. On fait sa fosse sur le theatre ; des fossoyeurs disent des quolibets dignes
d'eux, en tenant dans leurs mains des tetes de morts ; le prince Hamlet rdpond a leurs
^rossieretes abominables par des /dies non mains degcrAtantes. Pendant ce temps-Ik,
un des acteurs fait la conquete de la Pologne. Hamlet, sa mere, et son beau-pere
boivent ensemble sur le theatre ; on chante a table, on s'y querelle, on se bat, on se tue :
en croirait que cet ouvrage est Ic fruit d£ V imagination dun sauvage ivre. Disserta-
tion before Semiramis.
This is not, perhaps, very like Hamlet ; but nothing can be more like Voltaire. Ed,
Characteristics of Shakspeare's Dramas 47
one and the same with the perfection of its outward form.
Such as the Ufe is, such is the form. Nature, the prime
genial artist, inexhaustible in diverse powers, is equally
inexhaustible in forms ; — each exterior is the physiog-
nomy of the being within, — its true image reflected and
thrown out from the concave mirror ; — and even such
is the appropriate excellence of her chosen poet, of our
own Shakspeare, — himself a nature humanized, a genial
understanding directing self-consciously a power and an
implicit wisdom deeper even than our consciousness.
I greatly dislike beauties and selections in general ; but
as proof positive of his unrivalled excellence, I should like
to try Shakspeare by this criterion. Make out your
amplest catalogue of all the human faculties, as reason or
the moral law, the will, the feeling of the coincidence of
the two (a feeling sui generis et demonstratio demonstrati-
onum) called the conscience, the understanding or prud-
ence, wit, fancy, imagination, judgment, — and then of the
objects on which these are to be employed, as the beauties,
the terrors, and the seeming caprices of nature, the realities
and the capabilities, that is, the actual and the ideal, of
the human mind, conceived as an individual or as a social
being, as in innocence or in guilt, in a play-paradise, or in
a war-field of temptation ; — and then compare with Shak-
speare under each of these heads all or any of the writers
in prose and verse that have ever lived ! Who, that is
competent to judge, doubts the result ? — And ask your
own hearts, — ask your own common sense — to conceive
the possibility of this man being — I say not, the drunken
savage of that wretched sciolist, whom Frenchmen, to
their shame, have honoured before their elder and better
worthies, — but the anomalous, the wild, the irregular,
genius of our daily criticism ! What ! are we to have
miracles in sport ? — Or, I speak reverently, does God
choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man ?
RECAPITULATION, AND SUMMARY
Of the Characteristics of Shakspeare' s Dramas}
In lectures, of which amusement forms a large part of the
object, there are some peculiar difficulties. The architect
1 For the most part communicated by Mr. Justice Coleridge. Ed.
48 Characteristics of
places his foundation out of sight, and the musician tunes
his instrument before he makes his appearance ; but the
lecturer has to try his chords in the presence of the assem-
bly ; an operation not likely, indeed, to produce much
pleasure, but yet indispensably necessary to a right under-
standing of the subject to be developed.
Poetry in essence is as familiar to barbarous as to
civilized nations. The Laplander and the savage Indian
are cheered by it as well as the inhabitants of London and
Paris ; — its spirit takes up and incorporates surrounding
materials, as a plant clothes itself with soil and climate,
whilst it exhibits the working of a vital principle within
independent of all accidental circumstances. And to judge
with fairness of an author's works, we ought to distinguish
what is inward and essential from what is outward and
circumstantial. It is essential to poetry that it be simple,
and appeal to the elements and primary laws of our nature ;
that it be sensuous, and by its imagery elicit truth at a
flash ; that it be impassioned, and be able to move our
feelings and awaken our affections. In comparing different
poets with each other, we should inquire which have
brought into the fullest play our imagination and our
reason, or have created the greatest excitement and pro-
duced the completest harmony. If we consider great
exquisiteness of language and sweetness of metre alone, it
is impossible to deny to Pope the character of a delightful
writer ; but whether he be a poet, must depend upon
our definition of the word; and, doubtless, if every
thing that pleases be poetry, Pope's satires and epistles
must be poetry. This, I must say, that poetry, as
distinguished from other modes of composition, does not
rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no
appeal to our passions or our imagination. One character
belongs to all true poets, that they write from a principle
within, not originating in any thing without ; and that
the true poet's work in its form, its shapings, and its modi-
fications, is distinguished from all other works that assume
to belong to the class of poetry, as a natural from an
artificial flower, or as the mimic garden of a child from an
enamelled meadow. In the former the flowers are broken
from their stems and stuck into the ground ; they are
beautiful to the eye and fragrant to the sense, but their
colours soon fade, and their odour is transient as the
Shakspeare's Dramas 49
smile of the planter ; — while the meadow may be
visited again and again with renewed dehght ; its beauty
is innate in the soil, and its bloom is of the freshness of
nature.
The next ground of critical judgment, and point of com-
parison, will be as to how far a given poet has been in-
fluenced by accidental circumstances. As a living poet
must surely write, not for the ages past, but for that in
which he lives, and those which are to follow, it is, on the
one hand, natural that he should not violate, and on the
other, necessary that he should not depend on, the mere
manners and modes of his day. See how little does Shak-
speare leave us to regret that he was born in his particular
age ! The great asra in modem times was what is called
the Restoration of Letters ; — the ages preceding it are
called the dark ages ; but it would be more wise, perhaps,
to call them the ages in which we were in the dark.
It is usually overlooked that the supposed dark period
was not universal, but partial and successive, or alter-
nate ; that the dark age of England was not the
dark age of Italy, but that one country was in its
light and vigour, whilst another was in its gloom and
bondage. But no sooner had the Reformation sounded
through Europe like the blast of an archangel's trumpet,
than from king to peasant there arose an enthusiasm for
knowledge ; the discovery of a manuscript became the
subject of an embassy ; Erasmus read by moonlight,
because he could not afford a torch, and begged a penny,
not for the love of charity, but for the love of learning.
The three great points of attention were religion, morals, and
taste ; men of genius as well as men of learning, who in this
age need to be so widely distinguished, then alike became
copyists of the ancients ; and this, indeed, was the only
way by which the taste of mankind could be improved, or
their understandings informed. Whilst Dante imagined
himself a humble follower of Virgil, and Ariosto of Homer,
they were both unconscious of that greater power working
within them, which in many points carried them beyond
their supposed originals. All great discoveries bear the
stamp of the age in which they are made ; — hence we per-
ceive the effects of the purer religion of the moderns, visible
for the most part in their lives ; and in reading their works
we should not content ourselves with the mere narratives
50 Characteristics of
of events long since passed, but should learn to apply their
maxims and conduct to ourselves.
Having intimated that times and manners lend their
form and pressure to genius, let me once more draw a slight
parallel between the ancient and modern stage, the stages
of Greece and of England. The Greeks were polytheists ;
their religion was local ; almost the only object of all their
knowledge, art and taste, was their gods ; and, accordingly,
their productions were, if the expression may be allowed,
statuesque, whilst those of the moderns are picturesque.
The Greeks reared a structure, which in its parts, and as a
whole, filled the mind with the calm and elevated im-
pression of perfect beauty, and symmetrical proportion.
The moderns also produced a whole, a more striking whole ;
but it was by blending materials and fusing the parts
together. And as the Pantheon is to York Minster or
Westminster Abbey, so is Sophocles compared with Shak-
speare ; in the one a completeness, a satisfaction, an
excellence, on which the mind rests with complacency;
in the other a multitude of interlaced materials, great and
little, magnificent and mean, accompanied, indeed, with
the sense of a falling short of perfection, and yet, at the
same time, so promising of our social and individual pro-
gression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for
that repose of the mind which dwells on the forms of sym-
metry in the acquiescent admiration of grace. This
general characteristic of the ancient and modem drama
might be illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern
music ; — the one consisting of melody arising from a suc-
cession only of pleasing sounds, — the modern embracing
harmony sJzo, the result of combination and the effect of a
whole.
I have said, and I say it again, that great as was the
genius of Shakspeare, his judgment was at least equal to it.
Of this any one will be convinced, who attentively con-
siders those points in which the dramas of Greece and
England differ, from the dissimilitude of circumstances by
which each was modified and influenced. The Greek stage
had its origin in the ceremonies of a sacrifice, such as of the
goat to Bacchus, whom we most erroneously regard as
merely the jolly god of wine; — for among the ancients he
was venerable, as the symbol of that power which acts
without our consciousness in the vital energies of nature, —
Shakspeare's Dramas 51
the vinum mundi, — as Apollo was that of the conscious
agency of our intellectual being. The heroes of old under
the influences of this Bacchic enthusiasm performed more
than human actions ; — hence tales of the favorite cham-
pions soon passed into dialogue. On the Greek stage the
chorus was always before the audience ; the curtain was
never dropped, as we should say ; and change of place
being therefore, in general, impossible, the absurd notion
of condemning it merely as improbable in itself was never
entertained by any one. If we can believe ourselves at
Thebes in one act, we may believe ourselves at Athens in
the next. If a story lasts twenty-four hours or twenty-four
years, it is equally improbable. There seems to be no just
boundary but what the feelings prescribe. But on the
Greek stage where the same persons were perpetually
before the audience, great judgment was necessary in
venturing on any such change. The poets never, there-
fore, attempted to impose on the senses by bringing places
to men, but they did bring men to places, as in the well
known instance in the Eumenides, where during an evident
retirement of the chorus from the orchestra, the scene is
changed to Athens, and Orestes is first introduced in the
temple of Minerva, and the chorus of Furies come in after-
wards in pursuit of him.^
In the Greek drama there were no formal divisions into
scenes and acts ; there were no means, therefore, of allow-
ing for the necessary lapse of time between one part of the
dialogue and another, and unity of time in a strict sense
was, of course, impossible. To overcome that difficulty of
accounting for time, which is effected on the modern stage
by dropping a curtain, the judgment and great genius of
the ancients supplied music and measured motion, and
with the lyric ode filled up the vacuity. In the story of the
Agamemnon of iEschylus, the capture of Troy is supposed
to be announced by a fire lighted on the Asiatic shore, and
the transmission of the signal by successive beacons to
Mycenae. The signal is first seen at the 21st line, and the
herald from Troy itself enters at the 486th, and Agamemnon
himself at the 783rd Une. But the practical absurdity of
1 ^sch. Eumen. v. 230-239. NotandUm est, icenam jam Athenas translatam sic
institui, ut primo Orestes solus conspiciatur in templo Minervce supplex ejus simula-
crum venerans; paulo post autem euin consequantur Eumenides, dr»c. Schutz's note.
The recessions of the chorus were termed fisTavaar da €li. There is another instance
in the Ajax, v. 814. Ed.
52 Characteristics of
this was not felt by the audience, who, in imagination
stretched minutes into hours, while they listened to the
lofty narrative odes of the chorus which almost entirely
filled up the interspace. Another fact deserves attention
here, namely, that regularly on the Greek stage a drama,
or acted story, consisted in reality of three dramas, called
together a trilogy, and performed consecutively in the
course of one day. Now you may conceive a tragedy of
Shakspeare's as a trilogy connected in one single repre-
sentation. Divide Lear into three parts, and each would
be a play with the ancients ; or take the three .^schylean
dramas of Agamemnon, and divide them into, or call them,
as many acts, and they together would be one play. The
first act would comprise the usurpation of ^Egisthus, and
the murder of Agamemnon ; the second, the revenge of
Orestes, and the murder of his mother ; and the third, the
penance and absolution of Orestes ; — occupying a period of
twenty-two years.
The stage in Shakspeare's time was a naked room with a
blanket for a curtain ; but he made it a field for monarchs.
That law of unity, which has its foundations, not in the
factitious necessity of custom, but in nature itself, the unity
of feeling, is every where and at all times observed by Shak-
speare in his plays. Read Romeo and Juliet ; — all is youth
and spring ; — youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipit-
ancies ; — spring with its odours, its flowers, and its transi-
ency ; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes
through, and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets
and the Montagues, are not common old men ; they have
an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring ;
with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage,
and his rash death, are all the effects of youth ; — whilst in
Juhet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the
nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with what-
ever is sweet in the freshness of spring ; but it ends with
a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening.
This unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of
Shakspeare.
It seems to me that his plays are distinguished from
those of aU other dramatic poets by the following char-
acteristics :
I. Expectation in preference to surprise. It is like the
true reading of the passage ; — * God said, Let there be light,
Shakspeare's Dramas 53
and there was light ; ' — not there was light. As the feehng
with which we startle at a shooting star compared with that
of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such
and so low is surprise compared with expectation.
2. Signal adherence to the great law of nature, that all
opposites tend to attract and temper each other. Passion
in Shakspeare generally displays libertinism, but involves
morality ; and if there are exceptions to this, they are, in-
dependently of their intrinsic value, all of them indicative
of individual character, and, like the farewell admonitions
of a parent, have an end beyond the parental relation.
Thus the Countess's beautiful precepts to Bertram, by
elevating her character, raise that of Helena her favorite,
and soften dov/n the point in her which Shakspeare does
not mean us not to see, but to see and to forgive, and at
length to justify. And so it is in Polonius, who is the per-
sonified memory of wisdom no longer actually possessed.
This admirable character is always misrepresented on the
stage. Shakspeare never intended to exhibit him as a
bufioon; for although it was natural that Hamlet, — a
young man of fire and genius, detesting formality, and dis-
liking Polonius on political grounds, as imagining that he
had assisted his uncle in his usurpation, — should express
himself satirically, — yet this must not be taken as exactly
the poet's conception of him. In Polonius a certain indura-
tion of character had arisen from long habits of business ;
but take his advice to Laertes, and Ophelia's reverence for
his memory, and we shall see that he was meant to be repre-
sented as a statesman somewhat past his faculties, — his
recollections of Ufe all full of wisdom, and showing a know-
ledge of human nature, whilst what immediately takes
place before him, and escapes from him, is indicative of
weakness.
But as in Homer all the deities are in armour, even
Venus ; so in Shakspeare all the characters are strong.
Hence real folly and dulness are made by him the vehicles
of wisdom. There is no difficulty for one being a fool to
imitate a fool ; but to be, remain, and speak hke a wise man
and a great wit, and yet so as to give a vivid representation
of a veritable fool, — hie labor, hoc opus est. A drunken
constable is not uncommon, nor hard to draw ; but see
and examine what goes to make up a Dogberry.
3. Keeping at all times in the high road of hfe. Shak-
54 Characteristics of
speare has no innocent adulteries, no interesting incests,
no virtuous vice ; — he never renders that amiable which
religion and reason alike teach us to detest, or clothes im-
purity in the garb of virtue, like Beaumont and Fletcher,
the Kotzebues of the day. Shakspeare's fathers are roused
by ingratitude, his husbands stung by unfaithfulness ; in
him, in short, the affections are wounded in those points in
which all may, nay, must, feel.' Let the morality of Shak-
speare be contrasted with that of the writers of his own, or
the succeeding, age, or of those of the present day, who
boast their superiority in this respect. No one can dispute
that the result of such a comparison is altogether in favour
of Shakspeare ; — even the letters of women of high rank
in his age were often coarser than his writings. If he
occasionally disgusts a keen sense of delicacy, he never
injures the mind; he neither excites, nor flatters, passion,
in order to degrade the subject of it; he does not use
the faulty thing for a faulty purpose, nor carries on
warfare against virtue, by causing wickedness to appear
as no wickedness, through the medium of a morbid sym-
pathy with the unfortunate. In Shakspeare vice never
walks as in twilight ; nothing is purposely out of its place ;
— he inverts not the order of nature and propriety, — does
not make every magistrate a drunkard or glutton, nor
every poor man meek, humane, and temperate ; he has no
benevolent butchers, nor any sentimental rat-catchers.
4. Independence of the ciramatic interest on the plot.
The interest in the plot is always in fact on account of the
characters, not vice versa, as in almost all other writers ; the
plot is a mere canvass and no more. Hence arises the true
justification of the same stratagem being used in regard to
Benedict and Beatrice, — the vanity in each being alike.
Take away from the Much Ado About Nothing all that
which is not indispensable to the plot, either as having
little to do with it, or, at best, like Dogberry and his com-
rades, forced into the service, when any other less ingeni-
ously absurd watchmen and night-constables would have
answered the mere necessities of the action ; — take away
Benedict, Beatrice, Dogberry, and the reaction of the
former on the character of Hero, — and what will remain ?
In other writers the main agent of the plot is always the
prominent character ; in Shakspeare it is so, or is not so,
as the character is in itself calculated, or not calculated, to
Shakspeare's Dramas 55
form the plot. Don John is the main-spring of the plot of
this play ; but he is merely shown and then withdrawn.
5. Independence of the interest on the story as the
ground-work of the plot. Hence Shakspeare never took
the trouble of inventing stories. It was enough for him to
select from those that had been already invented or re-
corded such as had one or other, or both, of two recom-
mendations, namely, suitableness to his particular purpose,
and their being parts of popular tradition, — names of which
we had often heard, and of their fortunes, and as to which
all we wanted was, to see the man himself. So it is just the
man himself, the Lear, the Shylock, the Richard, that
Shakspeare makes us for the first time acquainted with.
Omit the first scene in Lear, and yet every thing wiU re-
main ; so the first and second scenes in the Merchant of
Venice. Indeed it is universally true.
6. Interfusion of the lyrical — that which in its very
essence is poetical — not only with the dramatic, as in the
plays of Metastasio, where at the end of the scene comes
the aria as the exit speech of the character, — but also in and
through the dramatic. Songs in Shakspeare are intro-
duced as songs only, just as songs are in real life, beautifully
as some of them are characteristic of the person who has
sung or called for them, as Desdemona's 'Willow,' and
Ophelia's wild snatches, and the sweet caroUings in As You
Like It. But the whole of the Midsummer Night's Dream
is one continued specimen of the dramatized lyrical. And
observe how exquisitely the dramatic of Hotspur ; —
Marry, and I'm glad on't with all my heart ;
I'd rather be a kitten and cry — mew, &c.
melts away into the lyric of Mortimer ; —
I understand thy looks : that pretty Welsh
Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens,
I am too perfect in, &c.
Henry IV. part i. act hi. sc. i.
7. The characters of the dramatis personce, like those
in real hfe, are to be inferred by the reader ; — they are
not told to him. And it is well worth remarking that
Shakspeare's characters, like those in real life, are very
commonly misunderstood, and almost always understood
by different persons in different ways. The causes are
56 Outline of an Introductory
the same in either case. If you take only what the friends
of the character say, you may be deceived, and still more
so, if that which his enemies say ; nay, even the character
himself sees himself through the medium of his character,
and not exactly as he is. Take all together, not omitting
a shrewd hint from the clown or the fool, and perhaps your
impression will be right ; and you may know whether you
have in fact discovered the poet's own idea, by all the
speeches receiving light from it, and attesting its reality
by reflecting it.
Lastly, in Shakspeare the heterogeneous is united, as it
is in nature. You must not suppose a pressure or passion
always acting on or in the character ! — passion in Shak-
speare is that by which the individual is distinguished
from others, not that which makes a different kind of him.
Shakspeare followed the main march of the human affec-
tions. He entered into no analysis of the passions or faiths
of men, but assured himself that such and such passions
and faiths were grounded in our common nature, and not
in the mere accidents of ignorance or disease. This is an
important consideration, and constitutes our Shakspeare
the morning star, the guide and the pioneer, of true
philosophy.
Outline of
AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE UPON
SHAKSPEARE.
Of that species of writing termed tragi-comedy, much has
been produced and doomed to the shelf. Shakspeare's
comic are continually re-acting upon his tragic characters.
Lear, wandering amidst the tempest, has all his feelings
of distress increased by the overflowings of the wild wit
of the Fool, as vinegar poured upon wounds exacerbates
their pain. Thus even his comic humour tends to the
developement of tragic passion.
The next characteristic of Shakspeare is his keeping at
all times in the high road of life, &c.^ Another evidence
of his exquisite judgment is, that he seizes hold of popular
J See the foregoing Essay. S. C.
Lecture upon Shakspeare 57
tales ; Lear and the Merchant of Venice were popular
tales, but are so excellently managed, that both are the
representations of men in all countries and of all times.
His dramas do not arise absolutely out of some one ex-
traordinary circumstance, the scenes may stand independ-
ently of any such one connecting incident, as faithful
representations of men and manners. In his mode of
drawing characters there are no pompous descriptions of
a man by himself ; his character is to be drawn, as in real
life, from the whole course of the play, or out of the mouths
of his enemies or friends. This may be exemplified in
Polonius, whose character has been often misrepresented.
Shakspeare never intended him for a buffoon, &c.^
Another excellence of Shakspeare in which no writer
equals him, is in the language of nature. So correct is
it, that we can see ourselves in every page. The style and
manner have also that felicity, that not a sentence can
be read, without its being discovered if it is Shaksperian.
In observation of living characters — of landlords and pos-
tilions Fielding has great excellence ; but in drawing
from his own heart, and depicting that species of character,
which no observation could teach, he failed in comparison
with Richardson, who perpetually places himself, as it
were, in a day-dream. Shakspeare excels in both. Witness
the accuracy of character in Juliet's Name ; while for the
great characters of lago, Othello, Hamlet, Richard III.,
to which he could never have seen any thing similar, he
seems invariably to have asked himself. How should I act
or speak in such circumstances ? His comic characters are
also peculiar. A drunken constable was not uncommon ;
but he makes folly a vehicle for wit, as in Dogberry : every
thing is a sub-stratum on which his genius can erect the
mightiest superstructure.
To distinguish that which is legitimate in Shakspeare
from what does not belong to him, we must observe his
varied images symbolical of novel truth, thrusting by,
and seeming to trip up each other, from an impetuosity of
thought, producing a flowing metre and seldom closing
with the line. In Pericles, a play written fifty years before,
but altered by Shakspeare, his additions may be recognised
1 See the Notes on Hamlet, which contain the same general view of the character of
Polonius. As there are a few additional hints in the present report, I have thought it
worth printing. S. C.
58 Outline of an Introductory Lecture
to half a line, from the metre, which has the same perfec-
tion in the flowing continuity of interchangeable metrical
pauses in his earliest plays, as in Love's Labour's Lost.^
Lastly contrast his morality with the writers of his own
or of the succeeding age, &c.2 If a man speak injuriously
of our friend, our vindication of him is naturally warm.
Shakspeare has been accused of profaneness. I for my
part have acquired from perusal of him, a habit of looking
into my own heart, and am confident that Shakspeare is
an author of all others the most calculated to make his
readers better as well as wiser.
Shakspeare, possessed of wit, humour, fancy and imagi-
nation, built up an outward world from the stores within
his mind, as the bee finds a hive ^ from a thousand sweets
gathered from a thousand flowers. He was not only a
great poet, but a great philosopher. Richard IIL, lago, and
Falstaff are men who reverse the order of things, who place
intellect at the head, whereas it ought to follow, Hke Geo-
metry, to prove and to confirm. No man, either hero or saint,
ever acted from an unmixed motive ; for let him do what
he will rightly, still Conscience whispers "it is your duty."
Richard, laughing at conscience and sneering at religion,
felt a confidence in his intellect, which urged him to commit
the most horrid crimes, because he felt himself, although
inferior in form and shape, superior to those around him ;
he felt he possessed a power, which they had not. lago,
on the same principle, conscious of superior intellect, gave
scope to his envy, and hesitated not to ruin a gallant, open
and generous friend in the moment of felicity, because he
was not promoted as he expected. Othello was superior
in place, but lago felt him to be inferior in intellect, and
unrestrained by conscience, trampled upon him. — Falstaff,
not a degraded man of genius, like Burns, but a man of
degraded genius, with the same consciousness of superiority
to his companions, fastened himself on a young Prince,
1 Lamb, comparing Fletcher with Shakspeare, writes thus : " Fletcher's ideas moved
slow ; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at ever}' turn ; he lays line
upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we
see their junctures. Shakspeare mingles every thing, runs line into line, embarrasses
sentences and metaphors ; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and
clamorous for disclosure." Characters of Dram. Writers, contetfip. with Shakspea.re.
~ See the foregoing Essay.
3 There must have been some mistake in the report of this sentence, unless there was
a momentary lapse of mind on the part of the lecturer.
Order of Shakspeare's Plays 59
to prove how much his influence on an heir apparent
would exceed that of a statesman. With this view he
hesitated not to adopt the most contemptible of all char-
acters, that of an open and professed liar : even his sen-
suality was subservient to his intellect ; for he appeared
to drink sack, that he might have occasion to show off his
wit. One thing, however, worthy of observation, is the
perpetual contrast of labour in Falstaff to produce wit,
with the ease with which Prince Henry parries his shafts ;
and the final contempt which such a character deserves
and receives from the young king, when Falstaff exhibits
the struggle of inward determination with an outward
show of humility.
ORDER OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.
Various attempts have been made to arrange the plays
of Shakspeare, each according to its priority in time, by
proofs derived from external documents. How unsuccess-
ful these attempts have been might easily be shewn, not
only from the widel}^ different results arrived at by men, all
deeply versed in the black-letter books, old plays, pam-
phlets, manuscript records and catalogues of that age, but
also from the fallacious and unsatisfactory nature of the
facts and assumptions on which the evidence rests. In that
age, when the press was chiefly occupied with controversial
or practical divinity, — when the law, the church and the
state engrossed all honour and respectability, — when a
degree of disgrace, levior qucedam infamicB macula, was
attached to the publication of poetry, and even to have
sported with the Muse, as a private relaxation, was sup-
posed to be — a venial fault, indeed, yet — something
beneath the gravity of a wise man, — when the professed
poets were so poor, that the very expenses of the press
demanded the Uberality of some wealthy individual, so that
two thirds of Spenser's poetic works, and those most highly
praised by his learned admirers and friends, remained for
many years in manuscript, and in manuscript perished, —
when the amateurs of the stage were comparatively few,
and therefore for the greater part more or less known to
each other, — when we know that the plays of Shakspeare,
6o Order of Shakspeare's Plays
both during and after his Ufe, were the property of the stage,
and pubUshed by the players, doubtless according to their
notions of acceptability with the visitants of the theatre, — ■
in such an age, and under such circumstances, can an
allusion or reference to any drama or poem in the publica-
tion of a contemporary be received as conclusive evidence,
that such drama or poem had at that time been published ?
Or, further, can the priority of publication itself prove any
thing in favour of actually prior composition ?
We are tolerably certain, indeed, that the Venus and
Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, were his two earliest
poems, and though not printed until 1593, in the twenty-
ninth year of his age, yet there can be little doubt that they
had remained by him in manuscript many years. For Mr.
Malone has made it highly probable, that he had com-
menced a writer for the stage in 1591, when he was twenty-
seven years old, and Shakspeare himself assures us that the
Venus and Adonis was the first heir of his invention.^
Baffled, then, in the attempt to derive any satisfaction
from outward documents, we may easily stand excused if
we turn our researches towards the internal evidences
furnished by the writings themselves, with no other
positive data than the known facts, that the Venus and
Adonis was printed in 1593, the Rape of Lucrece in 1594,
and that the Romeo and Juliet had appeared in 1595, —
and with no other presumptions than that the poems, his
very first productions, were written many years earlier, —
(for who can believe that Shakspeare could have remained
to his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year without attempting
poetic composition of any kind ?) — and that between these
and Romeo and Juliet there had intervened one or two
other dramas, or the chief materials, at least, of them,
although they may very possibly have appeared after the
success of the Romeo and Juliet and some other circum-
stances had given the poet an authority with the pro-
prietors, and created a prepossession in his favour with the
theatrical audiences.
1 But if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble
a godfather, &c.
Dedication of the V. and A. to Lord Southampton.
Order of Shakspeare's Plays 6i
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, l802.
First Epoch.
The London Prodigal.
Cromwell.
Henry VI., three parts, first edition.
The old King John.
Edward III.
The old Taming of the Shrew.
Pericles.
AH these are transition-works, Uehergangswerke ; not his,
yet of him.
Second Epoch.
All's Well That Ends Well ; — but afterwards worked
up afresh (umgearbeitet) , especially Parolles.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona ; a sketch.
Romeo and Juliet ; first draft of it.
Third Epoch
rises into the full, although youthful, Shakspeare ; it was
the negative period of his perfection.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Twelfth Night.
As You Like It.
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Richard II.
Henry IV. and V.
Henry VIII. ; Gelegenheitsgedicht.
Romeo and Juliet, as at present.
Merchant of Venice.
Fourth Epoch.
Much Ado About Nothing.
Merry Wives of Windsor ; first edition.
Henry VI. ; rifacimento.
Fifth Epoch.
The period of beauty was now past ; and that of dimrrjs
and grandeur succeeds.
Lear.
Macbeth.
62 Order of Shakspeare's Plays
Hamlet.
Timon of Athens ; an after vibration of Hamlet,
Troilus and Cressida ; Uebergang in die Ironie,
The Roman Plays.
King John, as at present.
Merry Wives of Windsor.^ ...
Taming of the Shrew. j ^^^^<^^^^^^^^'
Measure for Measure.
OtheUo.
Tempest.
Winter's Tale.
Cymbeline.
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 181O.
Shakspeare's earliest dramas I take to be.
Love's Labour's Lost.
All's Well That Ends WelL
Comedy of Errors.
Romeo and Juliet,
In the second class I reckon
Midsummer Night's Dream.
As You Like It.
Tempest.
Twelfth Night.
In the third, as indicating a greater energy — not merely
of poetry, but — of all the world of thought, yet stiU \vith
some of the grov/ing pains, and the awkwardness of growth,
I place
Troilus and Cressida.
Cjnnbeline.
Merchant of Venice.
Much Ado About Nothing.
Taming of the Shrew.
In the fourth, I place the plays containing the greatest
characters ;
Macbeth.
Lear.
Hamlet.
OtheUo.
And lastly, the historic dramas, in order to be able to show
Order of Shakspeare's Plays 63
my reasons for rejecting some whole plays, and very many
scenes in others.
CLASSIFICATION ATTEMPTED, 1819.
I think Shakspeare's earliest dramatic attempt — ^perhaps
even prior in conception to the Venus and Adonis, and
planned before he left Stratford — was Love's Labour's
Lost. Shortly afterwards I suppose Pericles and certain
scenes in Jeronymo to have been produced ; and in the
same epoch, I place the Winter's Tale and Cymbeline,
differing from the Pericles by the entire rifacimento of it,
when Shakspeare's celebrity as poet, and his interest, no
less than his influence as manager, enabled him to bring
forward the laid by labours of his youth. The example
of Titus Andronicus, which, as well as Jeronymo, was
most popular in Shakspeare's first epoch, had led the
young dramatist to the lawless mixture of dates and
manners. In this same epoch I should place the Comedy
of Errors, remarkable as being the only specimen of
poetical farce in our language, that is, intentionally such ;
so that all the distinct kinds of drama, which might be
educed a priori, have their representatives in Shakspeare's
works. I say intentionally such ; for many of Beaumont
and Fletcher's plays, and the greater part of Ben Jonson's
comedies are farce-plots. I add All's Well that Ends
Well, originally intended as the counterpart of Love's
Labour's Lost, Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night's
Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and Romeo and Juliet.
Second Epoch.
Richard IL
King John.
Henry VL, — rifacimento only.
Richard in.
Third Epoch.
Henry IV.
Henry V.
Merry Wives of Wmdsor.
Henry VIII., — a sort of historical masque, or show
play.
64 Notes on the Tempest
Fourth Epoch
gives all the graces and facilities of a genius in full posses-
sion and habitual exercise of power, and peculiarly of the
feminine, the lady's character.
Tempest.
As You Like It.
Merchant of Venice.
Twelfth Night.
and, finally at its very point of culmination, —
Lear.
Hamlet.
Macbeth.
OtheUo.
Last Epoch,
when the energies of intellect in the cycle of genius were,
though in a rich and more potentiated form, becoming
predominant over passion and creative self -manifestation.
Measure for Measure.
Timon of Athens.
Coriolanus.
Julius Caesar.
Antony and Cleopatra.
Troilus and Cressida.
Merciful, wonder-making Heaven ! what a man was
this Shakspeare ! Myriad-minded, indeed, he was.
NOTES ON THE TEMPEST.
There is a sort of improbability with which we are shocked
in dramatic representation, not less than in a narrative of
real life. Consequently, there must be rules respecting it ;
and as rules are nothing but means to an end previously
ascertained — (inattention to which simple truth has been
the occasion of all the pedantry of the French school), —
we must first determine what the immediate end or object
of the drama is. And here, as I have previously remarked,
I find two extremes of critical decision ; — the French,
which evidently presupposes that a perfect delusion is to
be aimed at, — an opinion which needs no fresh confutation ;
and the exact opposite to it, brought forward by Dr.
Notes on the Tempest 65
Johnson, who supposes the auditors throughout in the full
reflective knowledge of the contrary. In evincing the
impossibility of delusion, he makes no sufficient allowance
for an intermediate state, which I have before distin-
guished by the term, illusion, and have attempted to
illustrate its quality and character by reference to our
mental state, when dreaming. In both cases we simply
do not judge the imagery to be unreal ; there is a negative
reality, and no more. Whatever, therefore, tends to
prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed,
gradually in that state in which the images have such
negative realitj^ for the auditor, destroys this illusion, and
is dramatically improbable.
Now the production of this effect — a sense of improba-
bility— will depend on the degree of excitement in which
the mind is supposed to be. Many things would be intoler-
able in the first scene of a play, that would not at all
interrupt our enjoyment in the height of the interest,
when the narrow cockpit may be made to hold
The vasty field of France, or we may cram
Within its wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt.
Again, on the other hand, many obvious improbabilities
will be endured, as belonging to the groundwork of the
story rather than to the drama itself, in the first scenes,
which would disturb or disentrance us from all illusion in
the acme of our excitement ; as for instance, Lear's
division of his kingdom, and the banishment of Cordelia.
But, although the other excellences of the drama besides
this dramatic probability, as unity of interest, with
distinctness and subordination of the characters, and
appropriateness of style, are all, so far as they tend to
increase the inward excitement, means towards accom-
plishing the chief end, that of producing and supporting
this willing illusion, — yet they do not on that account
cease to be ends themselves ; and we must remember that,
as such, they carry their own justification with them, as
long as they do not contravene or interrupt the total
illusion. It is not even always, or of necessity, an objection
to them, that they prevent the illusion from rising to as
great a height as it might otherwise have attained ; — it is
enough that they are simply compatible with as high a
c
66 Notes on the Tempest
degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon
particular occasions, a palpable improbability may be
hazarded by a great genius for the express purpose of
keeping down the interest of a merely instrumental scene,
which would otherwise make too great an impression for
the harmony of the entire illusion. Had the panorama
been invented in the time of Pope Leo X., Raffael would
still, I doubt not, have smiled in contempt at the regret,
that the broom-twigs and scrubby bushes at the back of
some of his grand pictures were not as probable trees as
those in the exhibition.
The Tempest is a specimen of the purely romantic
drama, in which the interest is not historical, or depen-
dent upon fidelity of portraiture, or the natural connexion
of events, — but is a birth of the imagination, and rests
only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted
to, or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama
which owes no allegiance to time or space, and in which,
therefore, errors of chronology and geography — no mortal
sins in any species — are venial faults, and count for
nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the imaginative
faculty ; and although the illusion may be assisted by the
effect on the senses of the complicated scenery and decora-
tions of modern times, yet this sort of assistance is danger-
ous. For the principal and only genuine excitement ought
to come from within, — from the moved and sympathetic
imagination ; whereas, where so much is addressed to the
mere external senses of seeing and hearing, the spiritual
vision is apt to languish, and the attraction from without
will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate
interest which is intended to spring from within.
The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appro-
priate to the kind of drama, and giving, as it were, the
key-note to the whole harmony. It prepares and initiates
the excitement required for the entire piece, and yet does
not demand any thing from the spectators, which their
previous habits had not fitted them to understand. It is
the bustle of a tempest, from which the real horrors are
abstracted ; — therefore it is poetical, though not in strict-
ness natural — (the distinction to which I have so often
alluded) — and is purposely restrained from concentering
the interest on itself, but used merely as an induction or
tuning for what is to foUow.
Notes on the Tempest 67
In the second scene, Prospero's speeches, till the entrance
of Ariel, contain the finest example, I remember, of retro-
spective narration for the purpose of exciting immediate
interest, and putting the audience in possession of all the
information necessary for the understanding of the plot.^
Observe, too, the perfect probability of the moment chosen
by Prospero (the very Shakspeare himself, as it were, of
the tempest) to open out the truth to his daughter, his own
romantic bearing, and how completely any thing that might
have been disagreeable to us in the magician, is reconciled
and shaded in the humanity and natural feelings of the
father. In the very first speech of Miranda the simplicity
and tenderness of her character are at once laid open ; —
it would have been lost in direct contact with the agitation
of the first scene. The opinion once prevailed, but, happily,
is now abandoned, that Fletcher alone wrote for women ; —
the truth is, that with very few, and those partial, excep-
tions, the female characters in the plays of Beaumont and
Fletcher are, when of the light kind, not decent ; when
heroic, complete viragos. But in Shakspeare all the
elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet,
yet dignified feehng of all that continuates society, as sense
of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by
sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes,
but in that same equipoise of the faculties, during which
the feelings are representative of all past experience, — not
of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has
been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first
mother that lived. Shakspeare saw that the want of pro-
minence, which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed
beauty of the woman's character, and knew that it arose not
from any deficiency, but from the more exquisite harmony
of aU the parts of the moral being constituting one living
total of head and heart. He has drawn it, indeed, in all
its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, forti-
1 Pro. Mark his condition, and th' event ; then tell me,
If th\^ might be a brother.
Mira. I should sin,
To think but nobly of my grandmother ;
Good wombs have bore bad sons.
Pro. Now the condition, &c.
Theobald has a note upon this passage, and suggests that Shakspeare placed it
thus :—
Pro. Good wombs have bore bad sons,—
Now the condition.
Mr. Coleridge writes in the margin: 'I cannot but believe that Theobald is quite
right,'— ^<^. ^
68 Notes on the Tempest
tude, — shown in all of them as follov/ing the heart, which
gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without
the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees aU things in
and by the hght of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in
the exaggerations of love alone. In all the Shakspearian
women there is essentially the same foundation and prin-
ciple ; the distinct individuahty and variety are merely
the result of the modification of circumstances, whether in
Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katherine
the queen.
But to return. The appearance and characters of the
super or ultra-natural servants are finely contrasted. Ariel
has in every thing the airy tint which gives the name ; and
it is worthy of remark that Miranda is never directly
brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the natural and
human of the one and the supernatural of the other should
tend to neutralize each other ; Caliban, on the other hand,
is all earth, all condensed and gross in feelings and images ;
he has the dawnings of understanding without reason or
the moral sense, and in him, as in some brute animals, this
advance to the intellectual faculties, without the moral
sense, is marked by the appearance of vice. For it is in
the primacy of the moral being only that man is truly
human ; in his intellectual powers he is certainly ap-
proached by the brutes, and, man's whole system duly con-
sidered, those powers cannot be considered other than
means to an end, that is, to morality.
In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression
made by Ferdinand and Miranda on each other ; it is love
at first sight ; —
at the first sight
They have chang'd eyes : —
and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at
one moment that it takes place. That moment may have
been prepared by previous esteem, admiration, or even
affection, — yet love seems to require a momentary act of
vohtion, by which a tacit bond of devotion is imposed, —
a bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what
should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true
Shakspearian scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar
alteration of it in which a mere ludicrous psychological
experiment, as it were, is tried — displaying nothing but
Notes on the Tempest 69
indelicacy without passion. Prospero's interruption of
the courtship has often seemed to me to have no sufficient
motive ; still his alleged reason —
lest too light winning
Make the prize light —
is enough for the ethereal connections of the romantic
imagination, although it would not be so for the historical.^
The whole courting scene, indeed, in the beginning of the
third act, between the lovers, is a masterpiece ; and the
first dawn of disobedience in the mind of Miranda to the
command of her father is very finely drawn, so as to seem
the working of the Scriptural command Thou shall leave
father and mother, Sec. O ! with what exquisite purity this
scene is conceived and executed ! Shakspeare may some-
times be gross, but I boldly say that he is always moral and
modest. Alas ! in this our day decency of manners is
preserved at the expense of morality of heart, and delicacies
for vice are allowed, whilst grossness against it is hypo-
critically, or at least morbidly, condemned.
In this play are admirably sketched the vices generally
accompanying a low degree of civilization ; and in the first
scene of the second act Shakspeare has, as in many other
places, shown the tendency in bad men to indulge in scorn
and contemptuous expressions, as a mode of getting rid of
their own uneasy feelings of inferiority to the good, and
also, by making the good ridiculous, of rendering the
transition of others to wickedness easy. Shakspeare never
puts habitual scorn into the mouths of other than bad men,
as here in the instances of Antonio and Sebastian. The
scene of the intended assassination of Alonzo and Gonzalo
is an exact counterpart of the scene between Macbeth and
his lady, only pitched in a lower key throughout, as de-
signed to be frustrated and concealed, and exhibiting the
same profound management in the manner of familiarizing
a mind, not immediately recipient, to the suggestion of
guilt, by associating the proposed crime with something
ludicrous or out of place, — something not habitually matter
of reverence. By this kind of sophistry the imagination
1 Fer. Yes, faith, and all his Lords, the Duke of Milan,
And his brave son, being twain.
Theobald remarks that no body was lost in the wreck ; and yet that no such character
is introduced in the fable, as the Duke of Milan's son. Mr. C. notes : ' Must not
Ferdinand have believed he was lost in the fleet that the tempest scattered ? '—Ed.
yo Notes on the Tempest
and fancy are first bribed to contemplate the suggested
act, and at length to become acquainted with it. Observe
how the effect of this scene is heightened by contrast with
another counterpoint of it in low life, — that between the
conspirators Stephano, Caliban, and Trinculo in the second
scene of the third act, in which there are the same essential
characteristics.
In this play and in this scene of it are also shown the
springs of the vulgar in politics, — of that kind of politics
which is inwoven with human nature. In his treatment
of this subject, wherever it occurs, Shakspeare is quite
peculiar. In other writers we find the particular opinions
of the individual ; in Massinger it is rank republicanism ;
in Beaumont and Fletcher even jure divino principles are
carried to excess ; — but Shakspeare never promulgates any
party tenets. He is always the philosopher and the
moralist, but at the same time with a profound veneration
for all the established institutions of society, and for those
classes which form the permanent elements of the state —
especially never introducing a professional character, as
such, otherwise than as respectable. If he must have any
name, he should be styled a philosophical aristocrat, delight-
ing in those hereditary institutions which have a tendency
to bind one age to another, and in that distinction of ranks,
of which, although few may be in possession, all enjoy the
advantages. Hence, again, you will observe the good
nature with which he seems always to make sport with the
passions and follies of a mob, as with an irrational animal.
He is never angry with it, but hugely content with holding
up its absurdities to its face ; and sometimes you may
trace a tone of almost affectionate superiority, something
like that in which a father speaks of the rogueries of a child.
See the good-humoured way in which he describes Stephano
passing from the most licentious freedom to absolute
despotism over Trinculo and Caliban. The truth is, Shak-
speare's characters are all genera intensely individualized ;
the results of meditation, of which observation supplied
the drapery and the colours necessary to combine them
with each other. He had virtually surveyed all the great
component powers and impulses of human nature, — had
seen that their different combinations and subordinations
were in fact the individualizers of men, and showed how
their harmony was produced by reciprocal disproportions
Notes on Love's Labour's Lost 71
of excess or deficiency. The language in which these
truths are expressed was not drawn from any set fashion,
but from the profoundest depths of his moral being, and is
therefore for all ages.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.
The characters in this play are either impersonated out of
Shakspeare's own multiformity by imaginative self-position
or out of such as a country town and schoolboy's observa-
tion might supply, — the curate, the schoolmaster, the
Armado, (who even in my time was not extinct in the
cheaper inns of North Wales) and so on. The satire is
chiefly on follies of words. Biron and Rosaline are
evidently the pre-existent state of Benedict and Beatrice,
and so, perhaps, is Boyet of Lafeu, and Costard of the
Tapster in Measure for Measure ; and the frequency of
the rhymes, the sweetness as well as the smoothness of the
metre, and the number of acute and fancifully illustrated
aphorisms, are all as they ought to be in a poet's youth.
True genius begins by generalizing and condensing ; it
ends in realizing and expanding. It first collects the
seeds.
Yet if this juvenile drama had been the only one extant
of our Shakspeare, and we possessed the tradition only of
his riper works, or accounts of them in writers who had not
even mentioned this play, — how many of Shakspeare's
char»acteristic features might we not still have discovered
in Love's Labour's Lost, though as in a portrait taken of
him in his boyhood ?
I can never sufficiently admire the wonderful activity
of thought throughout the whole of the first scene of the
play, rendered natural, as it is, by the choice of the char-
acters, and the whimsical determination on which the
drama is founded. A whimsical determination certainly ;
— yet not altogether so very improbable to those who are
conversant in the history of the middle ages, with their
Courts of Love, and all that lighter drapery of chivalry,
which engaged even mighty kings with a sort of serio-comic
interest, and may well be supposed to have occupied more
completely the smaller princes, at a time when the noble's
or prince's court contained the only theatre of the domain
72 Notes on Love's Labour's Lost
or principality. This sort of story, too, was admirably
suited to Shakspeare's times, when the Enghsh court was
still the foster-mother of the state, and the muses ; and
when, in consequence, the courtiers, and men of rank and
fashion, affected a display of wit, point, and sententious
observation, that would be deemed intolerable at present,
— but in which a hundred years of controversy, involving
every great political, and every dear domestic, interest, had
trained all but the lowest classes to participate. Add to
this the very style of the sermons of the time, and the
eagerness of the Protestants to distinguish themselves by
long and frequent preaching, and it will be found that,
from the reign of Henry VIII. to the abdication of James
II. no country ever received such a national education as
England.
Hence the comic matter chosen in the first instance is a
ridiculous imitation or apery of this constant striving after
logical precision, and subtle opposition of thoughts, to-
gether with a making the most of every conception or image,
by expressing it under the least expected property belong-
ing to it, and this, again, rendered specially absurd by being
applied to the most current subjects and occurrences. The
phrases and modes of combination in argument were
caught by the most ignorant from the custom of the age,
and their ridiculous misapplication of them is most amus-
ingly exhibited in Costard ; whilst examples suited only to
the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes
to abstract thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the
natural language only of the most vehement agitations of
the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry of Armado as
mere artifices of ornament.
The same kind of intellectual action is exhibited in a
more serious and elevated strain in many other parts of
this play. Biron's speech at the end of the fourth act is an
excellent specimen of it. It is logic clothed in rhetoric ;
— but observe how Shakspeare, in his two-fold being of
poet and philosopher, avails himself of it to convey pro-
found truths in the most lively images, — the whole re-
maining faithful to the character supposed to utter the
lines, and the expressions themselves constituting a
further developement of that character : —
other slow arts entirely keep the brain :
And therefore finding barren practisers,
Notes on Lovers Labour's Lost 73
Scarce shew a harvest of their heavy toil :
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain ;
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power ;
And gives to every power a double power.
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye,
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind ;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound.
When the suspicious tread of theft is stopp'd :
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible.
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails ;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste ;
For valour, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ?
Subtle as Sphinx ; as sweet and musical,
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair ;
And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write.
Until his ink were temper' d with love's sighs ;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive :
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire ;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That shew, contain, and nourish all the world ;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent ;
Then fools you were these women to forsweaj* ;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love ;
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men ;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women ;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men ;
Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths :
It is religion, to be thus forsworn :
For charity itself fulfils the law :
And who can sever love from charity ? —
This is quite a study ; — sometimes you see this youthful
god of poetry connecting disparate thoughts purely by
means of resemblances in the words expressing them, —
a thing in character in lighter comedy, especially of that
kind in which Shakspeare delights, namely, the purposed
display of wit, though sometimes, too, disfiguring his
graver scenes ; — but more often you may see him doubhng
the natural connection or order of logical consequence in
the thoughts by the introduction of an artificial and
74 Notes on Love's Labour's Lost
sought-for resemblance in the words, as, for instance, in
the third line of the play, —
And then grace us in the disgrace of death ; —
this being a figure often having its force and propriety, as
justified by the law of passion, which, inducing in the
mind an unusual activity, seeks for means to waste its
superfluity, — when in the highest degree — in lyric repeti-
tions and sublime tautology — (at her feet he bowed, he jell,
he lay down ; at her feet he bowed, he fell ; where he bowed,
there he fell down dead), — and, in lower degrees, in making
the words themselves the subjects and materials of that
surplus action, and for the same cause that agitates our
limbs, and forces our very gestures into a tempest in states
of high excitement.
The mere style of narration in Love's Labour's Lost,
like that of ^Egeon in the first scene of the Comedy of
Errors, and of the Captain in the second scene of Macbeth,
seems imitated with its defects and its beauties from Sir
Philip Sidney ; whose Arcadia, though not then published,
was already well-known in manuscript copies, and could
hardly have escaped the notice and admiration of Shak-
speare as the friend and client of the Earl of Southampton.
The chief defect consists in the parentheses and parenthetic
thoughts and descriptions, suited neither to the passion of
the speaker, nor the purpose of the person to whom the
information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the
author himself, — not by way of continuous undersong,
but — palpably, and so as to show themselves addressed to
the general reader. However, it is not unimportant to
notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions
of this play afford, that, though Shakspeare's acquirements
in the dead languages might not be such as we suppose in
a learned education, his habits had, nevertheless, been
scholastic, and those of a student. For a young author's
first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, and
his first observations of life are either drawn from the
immediate employments of his youth, and from the
characters and images most deeply impressed on his mind
in the situations in which those employments had placed
him ; — or else they are fixed on such objects and occur-
rences in the world, as are easily connected with, and seem
to bear upon, his studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects
Notes on Love's Labour's Lost 75
of his meditation. Just as Ben Jonson, who applied
himself to the drama after having served in Flanders, fills
his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the
wrongs and neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts
and knavery of their counterfeits. So Lessing's first
comedies are placed in the universities, and consist of
events and characters conceivable in an academic life.
I will only further remark the sweet and tempered
gravity, with which Shakspeare in the end draws the only
fitting moral which such a drama afforded. Here Rosaline
rises up to the full height of Beatrice : —
Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron.
Before I saw you, and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute
That lie within the mercy of your wit :
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain.
And therewithal, to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won,)
You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse
W^ith groaning wretches ; and your talk shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
To enforce the pained impotent to smile,
Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death ?
It cannot be ; it is impossible ;
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace.
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools :
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it : then, if sickly ears,
Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans,
W^ill hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal ;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault.
Right joyful of your reformation.
Act v. sc. 2. In Biron's speech to the Princess :
— and, therefore, like the eye.
Full of straying shapes, of habits, and of forms —
Either read stray, which I prefer ; or throw full back to
the preceding lines, —
like the eye, full
Of straying shapes, &c.
76 Notes on Midsummer Night's Dream
In the same scene :
Biron. And what to me, my love ? and what to me ?
Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rank ;
You are attaint with fault and perjury :
Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,
A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,
But seek the weary beds of people sick.
There can be no doubt, indeed, about the propriety of
expunging this speech of RosaUne's ; it soils the very page
that retains it. But I do not agree with Warburton and
others in striking out the preceding Hne also. It is quite
in Biron' s character ; and Rosaline not answering it
immediately, Dumain takes up the question for him, and,
after he and Longaville are answered, Biron, with evident
propriety, says ; —
Studies my mistress ? &c.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
Act i. sc. I.
Her. O cross ! too high to be enthrall'd to low —
Lys. Or else misgrafted, in respect of 3'ears ;
Her. O spite ! too old to be engag'd to young —
Lys. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends
Her. O hell ! to chuse love by another's eye !
There is no authority for any alteration ; — but I never
can help feeling how great an improvement it would be,
if the two former of Hermia's exclamations were omitted ;
— the third and only appropriate one would then become
a beauty, and most natural.
lb. Helena's speech : —
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight, &c.
I am convinced that Shakspeare availed himself of the
title of this play in his own mind, and worked upon it as a
dream throughout, but especially, and, perhaps, unpleas-
ingly, in this broad determination of ungrateful treachery
in Helena, so undisguisedly avowed to herself, and this,
too, after the witty cool philosophizing that precedes.
The act itself is natural, and the resolve so to act is, I fear,
likewise too true a picture of the lax hold which principles
Notes on Midsummer Night's Dream 77
have on a woman's heart, when opposed to, or even
separated from, passion and indination. For women are
less hypocrites to their own minds than men are, because
in general they feel less proportionate abhorrence of moral
evil in and for itself, and more of its outward consequences,
as detection, and loss of character than men, — their
natures being almost wholly extroitive. Still, however
just in itself, the representation of this is not poetical ;
we shrink from it, and cannot harmonize it with the ideal.
Act ii. sc. I. Theobald's edition.
Through bush, through briar —
SfC 9|C SfS «|C S|C
Through flood, through fire —
What a noble pair of ears this worthy Theobald must
have had ! The eight amphimacers or cretics, —
Over hill, over dale,
Thoro' bush, thoro' briar,
Over park, over pale.
Thoro' flood, thoro' fire —
have a delightful effect on the ear in their sweet transition
to the trochaic, —
I do wander ev'ry where
Swifter than the moones sphere, &c. —
The last words as sustaining the rhyme, must be considered,
as in fact they are, trochees in time.
It may be worth while to give some correct examples in
English of the principal metrical feet : —
Pyrrhic or Dibrach, u u = body, spirit.
Tribrach, u u u = nobody, hastily pronounced.
Iambus, u — = delight.
Trochee, — u = lightly.
Spondee, = God spake.
The paucity of spondees in single words in English and,
indeed, in the modern languages in general, makes, perhaps,
the greatest distinction, metrically considered, between
them and the Greek and Latin.
Dactyl, — u o = merrily.
Anap^st, u u — = a propos, or the first three syllables
of ceremony.'^
1 Written probably by mistake for " ceremonious."
yS Notes on Comedy of Errors
Amphibrachys, u — o = del'tghtful.
Amphimacer, — u — = over hill.
Antibacchius, u = the Lord God.
Bacchius u = Helvellyn.
Molossus, = John James Jones.
These simple feet may suffice for understanding the
metres of Shakspeare, for the greater part at least ; — but
Milton cannot be made harmoniously intelligible without
the composite feet, the Ionics, Paeons, and Epitrites.
lb. sc. 2. Titania's speech : — (Theobald adopting
Warburton's reading.)
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gate
Follying (her womb then rich with my young squire)
Would imitate, &c.
Oh ! oh ! Heaven have mercy on poor Shakspeare, and
also on Mr. Warburton's mind's eye !
Act V. sc. I. Theseus' speech : — (Theobald.)
And what poor [willing] duty cannot do,
Noble respect takes it in might, not merit.
To my ears it would read far more Shakspearian thus : —
And what poor duty cannot do, yet would,
Noble respect, &c.
lb. sc. 2.
Puck. Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf behowls the moon ;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores
All with weary task foredone, &c.
Very Anacreon in perfectness, proportion, grace, and
spontaneity ! So far it is Greek ; — but then add, O !
what wealth, what wild ranging, and yet what compression
and condensation of, English fancy ! In truth, there is
nothing in Anacreon more perfect than these thirty lines,
or half so rich and imaginative. They form a speckless
diamond.
COMEDY OF ERRORS.
The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspeare,
has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in
exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and
character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from
Notes on As You Like It 79
entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from
comedy by the Ucense allowed, and even required, in the
fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations.
The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is
possible. A comedy would scarcely allow even the two
Antipholuses ; because, although there have been instances
of almost indistinguishable likeness in two persons, yet
these are mere individual accidents, casus ludentis naturcB,
and the verum will not excuse the inverisimile. But farce
dares add the two Dromios, and is justified in so doing by
the laws of its end and constitution. In a word, farces
commence in a postulate, which must be granted.
AS YOU LIKE IT.
Act i. sc. I.
OH. What, boy 1
Orla. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.
OH. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain ?
There is a beauty here. The word 'boy' naturally pro-
vokes and awakens in Orlando the sense of his manly
powers ; and with the retort of * elder brother,* he grasps
him with firm hands, and makes him feel he is no boy.
lb. OH. Farewell, good Charles. — Now will I stir this gamester :
I hope, I shall see an end of him ; for my soul, yet I know not why,
hates nothing more than him. Yet he's gentle ; never school'd,
and yet learn' d ; full of noble device ; of all sorts enchantingly
beloved ! and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and
especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am al-
together misprized : but it shall not be so long ; this wrestler shall
clear all.
This has always appeared to me one of the most un-
Shakspearian speeches in all the genuine works of our poet ;
yet I should be nothing surprized, and greatly pleased, to
find it hereafter a fresh beauty, as has so often happened
to me with other supposed defects of great men. 1810.
It is too venturous to charge a passage in Shakspeare
with want of truth to nature ; and yet at first sight this
speech of Oliver's expresses truths, which it seems almost
impossible that any mind should so distinctly, so hvehly,
and so voluntarily, have presented to itself, in connection
with feehngs and intentions so malignant, and so contrary
8o Notes on Twelfth Night
to those which the qualities expressed would naturally
have called forth. But I dare not say that this seeming
unnaturalness is not in the nature of an abused wilfulness,
when united with a strong intellect. In such characters
there is sometimes a gloomy self-gratification in making
the absoluteness of the will (sit pro ratione volurJas /)
evident to themselves by setting the reason and the con-
science in full array against it. 1818.
lb. 5c. 2.
Celia. If you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself
with your judgment, the fear of your adventure would counsel
you to a more equal enterprize.
Surely it should be 'our eyes' and 'our judgment.'
lb. sc. 3.
Cel. But is all this for your father ?
Ros. No, some of it is for my child's father.
Theobald restores this as the reading of the older
editions. It may be so : but who can doubt that it is a
mistake for 'my father's child,' meaning herself ? Accord-
ing to Theobald's note, a most indelicate anticipation is
put into the mouth of Rosalind without reason ; — and
besides what a strange thought, and how out of place, and
unintelligible !
Act. iv. sc. 2.
Take thou no scorn
To wear the horn, the lusty horn ;
It was a crest ere thou wast born.
I question whether there exists a parallel instance of a
phrase, that like this of 'horns' is universal in all languages,
and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible
origin.
TWELFTH NIGHT.
Act i. sc. I. Duke's speech : —
— so full of shapes is fancy.
That it alone is high fantastical.
Warburton's alteration of is into in is needless. 'Fancy*
may very well be interpreted 'exclusive affection,' or
'passionate preference.' Thus, bird-fanciers, gentlemen
of the fancy, that is, amateurs of boxing, &c. The play of
Notes on Twelfth Night 8i
assimilation, — the meaning one sense chiefly, and yet keep-
ing both senses in view, is perfectly Shakspearian.
Act. ii. sc. 3. Sir Andrew's speech : —
An explanatory note on Pigrogromitus would have been
more acceptable than Theobald's grand discovery that
* lemon' ought to be * leman.'
lb. Sir Toby's speech : (Warburton's note on the
Peripatetic philosophy.)
Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw three
souls out of one weaver ?
O genuine, and inimitable (at least I hope so) Warburton!
This note of thine, if but one in five millions, would be half
a one too much.
lb. sc. 4.
Duke. My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves ;
Hath it not, boy ?
Vio. A little, by your favour.
Duke. What kind of woman is't ?
And yet Viola was to have been presented to Orsino as a
eunuch ! — Act i. sc. 2. Viola's speech. Either she forgot
this, or else she had altered her plan,
lb.
Vio. A blank, my lord : she never told her love 1 —
But let concealment, &c.
After the first line, (of which the last five words should be
spoken with, and drop down in, a deep sigh) the actress
ought to make a pause ; and then start afresh, from the
activity of thought, born of suppressed feelings, and which
thought had accumulated during the brief interval, as
vital heat under the skin during a dip in cold water.
lb. sc. 5.
Fabian. Though our silence be drawn from us by cars, yet peace.
Perhaps, 'cables.*
Act iii. sc. I.
Clown. A sentence is but a chevetil glove to a good wit. (Theo-
bald's note.)
Theobald's etymology of 'cheveril' is, of course, quite
right ; — but he is mistaken in supposing that there were no
82 Notes on All's Well that Ends Well
such things as gloves of chicken-skin. They were at one
time a main article in chirocosmetics.
Act V. sc. I. Clown's speech : —
So that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make
your two af5rmatives, why, then, the worse for my friends, and the
better for my foes.
(Warburton reads 'conclusion to be asked, is.')
Surely Warburton could never have wooed by kisses
and won, or he would not have flounder-flatted so
just and humorous, nor less pleasing than humorous, an
image into so profound a nihility. In the name of love
and wonder, do not four kisses make a double affirmative ?
The humour lies in the whispered 'No !' and the inviting
'Don't !' with which the maiden's kisses are accompanied,
and thence compared to negatives, which by repetition
constitute an affirmative.
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
Act i. sc. I.
Count. If the Hving be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it
soon mortal.
Bert. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that ?
Bertram and Lafeu, I imagine, both speak together, —
Lafeu referring to the Countess's rather obscure remark.
Act ii. sc. I. (Warburton' s note.)
King, — let higher Italy
(Those 'hated, that inherit but the fall
Of the last monarchy) see, that you come
Not to woo honour, but to wed it.
It would be, I own, an audacious and unjustifiable
change of the text ; but yet, as a mere conjecture, I
venture to suggest 'bastards,' for "bated.' As it stands,
in spite of Warburton's note, I can make little or nothing
of it. Why should the king except the then most illus-
trious states, which, as being republics, were the more
truly inheritors of the Roman grandeur ? — With my con-
jecture, the sense would be ; — 'let higher, or the more
northern part of Italy — (unless 'higher' be a corruption
Notes on Merry Wives of Windsor 83
for 'hir'd,' — the metre seeming to demand a monosyl-
lable) (those bastards that inherit the infamy only of
their fathers) see, &c.' The following 'woo' and 'wed'
axe so far confirmative as they indicate Shakspeare's
manner of connexion by unmarked influences of associa-
tion from some preceding metaphor. This it is which
makes his style so peculiarly vital and organic. Likewise
'those girls of Italy' strengthen the guess. The absurdity
of Warburton's gloss, which represents the king calling
Italy superior, and then excepting the only part the lords
were going to visit, must strike every one.
lb. sc. 3.
Laj. They say, miracles are past ; and we have our philosophical
persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and
causeless.
Shakspeare, inspired, as it might seem, with all know-
ledge, here uses the word 'causeless' in its strict philo-
sophical sense ; — cause being truly predicable only of
phenomena, that is, things natural, and not of noumena,
or things supernatural.
Act iii. sc. 5.
Dia, The Count Rousillon : — know you such a one ?
Hel. But by the ear that hears most nobly of him ;
His face I know not.
Shall we say here, that Shakspeare has unnecessarily
made his loveliest character utter a lie ? — Or shall we
dare think that, where to deceive was necessary, he thought
a pretended verbal verity a double crime, equally with the
other a lie to the hearer, and at the same time an attempt
to lie to one's own conscience ?
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.
Act i. sc. I.
Shal. The luce is the fresh fish, the salt fish is an old coat.
I CANNOT understand this. Perhaps there is a corruption
both of words and speakers. Shallow no sooner corrects
one mistake of Sir Hugh's, namely, 'louse' for 'luce,' a
pike, but the honest Welchman falls into another, namely,
'cod' [haccald], Camhrice 'cot' for coat.
84 Notes on Measure for Measure
Shal. The luce is the fresh fish —
Evans. The salt fish is an old cot.
'Luce is a fresh fish, and not a louse ; ' says Shallow.
'Aye, aye,' quoth Sir Hugh ; ' the fresh fish is the luce ;
it is an old cod that is the salt fish.' At all events, as the
text stands, there is no sense at all in the words,
lb. so. 3.
Fal. Now, the report goes, she has all the rule of her husband's
purse ; she hath a legion of angels.
Pist. As many devils entertain ; and To her, boy. say I.
Perhaps it is —
As many devils enter (or enter'd) swine ; and to her, hoy, say I : —
a somewhat profane, but not un-Shakspearian, allusion to
the 'legion' in St. Luke's 'gospel.'
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
This play, which is Shakspeare's throughout, is to me the
most painful — say rather, the only painful — part of his
genuine works. The comic and tragic parts equally border
on the /jbiGrjTov, — the one being disgusting, the other
horrible ; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not
merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice — (for
cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be for-
given, because we cannot conceive them as being morally
repented of ;) but it is likewise degrading to the character
of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shak-
speare in his errors only, have presented a still worse,
because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of
the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of
Alathe to Algripe. Of the counter-balancing beauties of
Measure for Measure, I need say nothing ; for T have
already remarked that the play is Shakspeare's throughout.
Act iii. sc. I.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where, &c.
This natural fear of Claudio, from the antipathy we have to
death, seems very little varied from that infamous wish of Msecenas,
recorded in the loist epistle of Seneca :
Debtlem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa, &-c. Warburton's note.
I cannot but think this rather an heroic resolve, than
Notes on Cymbeline 85
an infamous wish. It appears to me to be the grandest
symptom of an immortal spirit, when even that bedimmed
and overwhehned spirit recked not of its own immortahty,
still to seek to be, — to be a mind, a will.
As fame is to reputation, so heaven is to an estate, or
immediate advantage. The difference is, that the self-
love of the former cannot exist but by a complete suppres-
sion and habitual supplantation of immediate selfishness.
In one point of view, the miser is more estimable than
the spendthrift ; — only that the miser's present feelings
are as much of the present as the spendthrift's. But
ccBteris paribus, that is, upon the supposition that whatever
is good or lovely in the one coexists equally in the other,
then, doubtless, the master of the present is less a selfish
being, an animal, than he who lives for the moment with
no inheritance in the future. Whatever can degrade
man, is supposed in the latter case, whatever can elevate
him, in the former. And as to self ; — strange and generous
self ! that can only be such a self by a complete divestment
of all that men call self, — of aU that can make it either
practically to others, or consciously to the individual him-
self, different from the human race in its ideal. Such self
is but a perpetual religion, an inalienable acknowledgment
of God, the sole basis and ground of being. In this sense,
how can I love God, and not love myself, as far as it is of
God?
lb. sc. 2.
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go.
Worse metre, indeed, but better English would be, —
Grace to stand, virtue to go.
CYMBELINE.
Act i. sc. I.
You do not meet a man, but frowns : our bloods
No more obey the heavens, than our courtiers'
Still seem, as does the king's.
There can be little doubt of Mr. T5n:whitt's emendations
of 'courtiers' and 'king,' as to the sense ; — only it is not
impossible that Shakspeare's dramatic language may aUow
of the word, 'brows' or 'faces' being understood after the
86 Notes on Cymbeline
word 'courtiers,' which might then remain in the genitive
case plural. But the nominative plural makes excellent
sense, and is sufficiently elegant, and sounds to my ear
Shakspearian. What, however, is meant by 'our bloods
no more obey the heavens ? ' — Dr. Johnson's assertion
that 'bloods' signify 'countenances,' is, I think, mistaken
both in the thought conveyed — (for it was never a popular
beUef that the stars governed men's countenances,) and
in the usage, which requires an antithesis of the blood, — or
the temperament of the four humours, choler, melancholy,
phlegm, and the red globules, or the sanguine portion,
which was supposed not to be in our own power, but,
to be dependent on the influences of the heavenly bodies, —
and the countenances which are in our power really, though
from flattery we bring them into a no less apparent de-
pendence on the sovereign, than the former are in actual
dependence on the constellations.
I have sometimes thought that the word 'courtiers' was
a misprint for 'countenances,' arising from an anticipa-
tion, by foreglance of the compositor's eye, of the word
'courtier' a few lines below. The written r is easily and
often confounded with the written n. The compositor
read the first syllable court, and — his eye at the same time
catching the word 'courtier ' lower down — he completed
the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely
that Shakspeare intended first to express, generally the
same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a
particular application to the persons meant ; — a common
usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not
really mean to include himself ; and the word 'you' is an
additional confirmation of the 'our,' being used in this
place, for 'men' generally and indefinitely, just as 'you do
not meet,' is the same as, 'one does not meet.'
Act i. sc. 2. Imogen's speech : —
— My dearest husband,
I something fear my father's wrath ; but nothing
(Always reserv'd my holy duty) what
His rage can do on me.
Place the emphasis on 'me ; ' for 'rage' is a mere repetition
of ' wrath. '
Cym. O disloyal thing,
That should' st repair my youth, thou heapest
A year's age on me 1
Notes on Cymbeline 87
How is it that the commentators take no notice of the
un-Shakspearian defect in the metre of the second Une, and
what in Shakspeare is the same, in the harmony with the
sense and feehng ? Some word or words must have sHpped
out after 'youth,' — possibly 'and see :' —
That should'st repair my youth ! — and see, thou heap'st, &c.
lb. sc. 4. Pisanio's speech : —
— For so long
As he could make me with this eye or ear
Distinguish him from others, &c.
But Hhis eye,' in spite of the supposition of its being
used hixrixug is very awkward. I should think that
either 'or' — or 'the' was Shakspeare' s word ; —
As he could make me or with eye or ear.
lb. sc. 7. lachimo's speech : —
Hath nature given them eyes
To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones
Upon the number' d beach.
I would suggest 'cope' for 'crop.* As to 'twinn'd
stones' — may it not be a bold catachresis for muscles,
cockles, and other empty shells with hinges, which are
truly twinned ? I would take Dr. Farmer's 'umber'd,'
which I had proposed before I ever heard of its having been
already offered by him : but I do not adopt his interpreta-
tion of the word, which I think is not derived from umbra, a
shade, but from tcmber, a dingy yellow-brown soil, which
most commonly forms the mass of the sludge on the sea
shore, and on the banks of tide-rivers at low water. One
other possible interpretation of this sentence has occurred
to me, just barely worth mentioning ; — that the 'twinn'd
stones' are the augrim stones upon the number'd beech,
that is, the astronomical tables of beech-wood.
Act V. sc. 5.
Sooth. When as a lion's whelp, &c.
It is not easy to conjecture why Shakspeare should have
introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one
purpose, either propulsive, or explicatory, unless as a joke
on etymology.
88 Notes on Titus Andronicus
TITUS ANDRONICUS.
Act i. sc. I. Theobald's note.
I never heard it so much as intimated, that he (Shakspeare) had
turned his genius to stage-writing, before he associated with the
players, and became one of their body.
That Shakspeare never 'turned his genius to stage-writ-
ing,' as Theobald most Theohaldice phrases it, before he
became an actor, is an assertion of about as much authority,
as the precious story that he left Stratford for deer-steal-
ing, and that he lived by holding gentlemen's horses at the
doors of the theatre, and other trash of that arch-gossip,
old Aubrey. The metre is an argument against Titus
Andronicus being Shakspeare's, worth a score such chrono-
logical surmises. Yet I incline to think that both in this
play and in Jeronymo, Shakspeare wrote some passages,
and that they are the earliest of his compositions.
Act V. sc. 2.
I think it not improbable that the lines from —
I am not mad ; I know thee well enough ;
* 4: * « * « «
So thou destroy Rapine, and Murder there,
were written by Shakspeare in his earliest period. But
instead of the text —
Revenge, which makes the foul o-ffender quake.
Tit. Art thou Revenge ? and art thou sent to me ? —
the words in italics ought to be omitted.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.
Mr. Pope (after Dryden) informs us, that the story of Troilus and
Cressida was originally the work of one Lollius, a Lombard : but
Dryden goes yet further ; he declares it to have been written in
Latin verse, and that Chaucer translated it. — Lollius was a historio-
grapher of U rhino in Italy. Note in Stockdale's edition, 1807.
* Lollius was a historiographer of Urbino in Italy.' So
affirms the notary, to whom the Sieur Stockdale committed
the disfacimento of Ayscough's excellent edition of Shak-
speare. Pitv that the researchful notary has not either
Notes on Troilus and Cressida 89
told us in what century, and of what history, he was a
writer, or been simply content to depose, that LoUius, if a
writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat some-
where. The notary speaks of the Troy Boke of Lydgate,
printed in 15 13. I have never seen it ; but I deeply regret
that Chalmers did not substitute the whole of Lydgate's
works from the MSS. extant, for the almost worthless
Gower.
The Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare can scarcely be
classed with his dramas of Greek and Roman history ; but
it forms an intermediate link between the fictitious Greek
and Roman histories, which we may call legendary dramas,
and the proper ancient histories ; that is, between the
Pericles or Titus Andronicus, and the Coriolanus, or Julius
Caesar. Cymbeline is a congener with Pericles, and dis-
tinguished from Lear by not having any declared pro-
minent object. But where shall we class the Timon of
Athens ? Perhaps immediately below Lear. It is a Lear
of the satirical drama ; a Lear of domestic or ordinary
life ; — a local eddy of passion on the high road of society,
while all around is the week-day goings on of wind and
weather ; a Lear, therefore, without its soul-searching
flashes, its ear-cleaving thunder-claps, its meteoric
splendours, — without the contagion and the fearful sym-
pathies of nature, the fates, the furies, the frenzied elements,
dancing in and out, now breaking through, and scattering,
— now hand in hand with, — the fierce or fantastic group
of human passions, crimes, and anguishes, reeling on the
unsteady ground, in a wild harmony to the shock and the
swell of an earthquake. But my present subject was
Troilus and Cressida ; and I suppose that, scarcely know-
ing what to say of it, I by a cunning of instinct ran off to
subjects on which I should find it difficult not to say too
much, though certain after all that I should still leave the
better part unsaid, and the gleaning for others richer than
my own harvest.
Indeed, there is no one of Shakspeare's plays harder to
characterize. The name and the remembrances connected
with it, prepare us for the representation of attachment no
less faithful than fervent on the side of the youth, and of
sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the lady.
And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes
are strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind
90 Notes on Troilus and Cressida
by gems of greater value than itself. But as Shakspeare
calls forth nothing from the mausoleum of history, or the
catacombs of tradition, without giving, or eliciting, some
permanent and general interest, and brings forward no
subject which he does not moralize or intellectualize, — so
here he has drawn in Cressida the portrait of a vehement
passion, that, having its true origin and proper cause in
warmth of temperament, fastens on, rather than fixes to,
some one object by liking and temporary preference.
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her Hp,
Nay, her foot speaks ; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
This Shakspeare has contrasted with the profound affec-
tion represented in Troilus, and alone worthy the name
of love ; — affection, passionate indeed, — swoln with the
confluence of youthful instincts and youthful fancy, and
growing in the radiance of hope newly risen, in short
enlarged by the collective sympathies of nature ; — but
still having a depth of calmer element in a will stronger
than desire, more entire than choice, and which gives per-
manence to its own act by converting it into faith and
duty. Hence with excellent judgment, and with an ex-
cellence higher than mere judgment can give, at the close
of the play, when Cressida has sunk into infamy below
retrieval and beneath hope, the same will, which had been
the substance and the basis of his love, while the restless
pleasures and passionate longings, like sea- waves, had
tossed but on its surface, — this same moral energy is repre-
sented as snatching him aloof from all neighbourhood
with her dishonour, from all lingering fondness and languish-
ing regrets, whilst it rushes with him into other and nobler
duties, and deepens the channel, which his heroic brother's
death had left empty for its collected flood. Yet another
secondary and subordinate purpose Shakspeare has in-
woven with his delineation of these two characters, —
that of opposing the inferior civilization, but purer morals,
of the Trojans to the refinements, deep policy, but duplicity
and sensual corruptions of the Greeks.
To all this, however, so little comparative projection is
given, — nay, the masterly group of Agamemnon, Nestor,
and Ulysses, and, still more in advance, that of Achilles,
Ajax, and Thersites, so manifestly occupy the fore-ground.
Notes on Troilus and Cressida 91
that the subservience and vassalage of strength and animal
courage to intellect and policy seems to be the lesson most
often in our poet's view, and which he has taken little
pains to connect with the former more interesting moral
impersonated in the titular hero and heroine of the drama.
But I am half inclined to believe, that Shakspeare's main
object, or shall I rather say, his ruling impulse, was to
translate the poetic heroes of paganism into the not less
rude, but more intellectually vigorous, and more featurely,
warriors of Christian chivalry, — and to substantiate the
distinct and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric
epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic drama, — in
short, to give a grand history-piece in the robust style of
Albert Durer.
The character of Thersites, in particular, well deserves
a more careful examination, as the Caliban of demagogic
life ; — the admirable portrait of intellectual power deserted
by all grace, all moral principle, all not momentary im-
pulse ; — just wise enough to detect the weak head, and
fool enough to provoke the armed fist of his betters ; — one
whom malcontent Achilles can inveigle from malcontent
Ajax, under the one condition, that he shall be called on
to do nothing but abuse and slander, and that he shall be
allowed to abuse as much and as purulently as he likes,
that is, as he can ; — in short, a mule, — quarrelsome by
the original discord of his nature, — a slave by tenure of
his own baseness, — made to bray and be brayed at, to
despise and be despicable. 'Aye, Sir, but say what you
will, he is a very clever fellow, though the best friends
will fall out. There was a time when Ajax thought he
deserved to have a statue of gold erected to him, and hand-
some Achilles, at the head of the Myrmidons, gave no
Uttle credit to his friend Thersites !'
Act iv. sc. 5. Speech of Ulysses :
O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
That give a coasting welcome ere it comes —
Should it be 'accosting ?' 'Accost her, knight, accost !*
in the Twelfth Night. Yet there sounds a something so
Shakspearian in the phrase — 'give a coasting welcome,'
('coasting' being taken as the epithet and adjective of
'welcome,') that had the following words been, 'ere they
land,' instead of 'ere it comes,' I should have preferred
92 Notes on Coriolanus
the interpretation. The sense now is, 'that give welcome
to a salute ere it comes.'
CORIOLANUS.
This play illustrates the wonderfully philosophic im-
partiality of Shakspeare's politics. His own country's
history furnished him with no matter, but what was too
recent to be devoted to patriotism. Besides, he knew
that the instruction of ancient history would seem more
dispassionate. In Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, you see
Shakspeare's good-natured laugh at mobs. Compare
this with Sir Thomas Brown's aristocracy of spirit.
Act i. sc. I. Coriolanus' speech : —
He that depends
Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead,
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye ! Trust ye ?
I suspect that Shakspeare wrote it transposed ;
Trust ye ? Hang ye !
lb. sc. 10. Speech of Aufidius : —
Mine emulation
Hath not that honour in't, it had ; for where
I thought to crush him in an equal force.
True sword to sword ; I'll potch at him some way.
Or wrath, or craft may get him. —
My valour's poison'd
With only suffering stain by him for him
Shall fly out of itself: nor sleep, nor sanctuary,
Being naked, sick, nor fane, nor capitol,
The prayers of priests, nor times of sacrifices,
Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up
Their rotten privilege and custom 'gainst
My hate to Marcius.
I have such deep faith in Shakspeare's heart-lore, that
I take for granted that this is in nature, and not as a mere
anomaly ; although I cannot in myself discover any germ
of possible feeling, which could wax and unfold itself into
such sentiment as this. However, I perceive that in this
speech is meant to be contained a prevention of shock
at the after-change in Aufidius' character.
Notes on Julius Caesar 93
Act. ii. sc. I. Speech of Menenius : —
The most sovereign prescription in Galen, &c.
Was it without, or in contempt of, historical information
that Shakspeare made the contemporaries of Coriolanus
quote Cato and Galen ? I cannot decide to my own
satisfaction.
lb. sc. 3. speech of Coriolanus : —
Why in this wolvish gown should I stand here —
That the gown of the candidate was of whitened wool,
we know. Does 'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of
wool' ? If it means 'wolfish,' what is the sense ?
Act. iv. sc. 7. Speech of Aufidius :
All places yield to him ere he sits down, &c.
I have always thought this, in itself so beautiful speech,
the least explicable from the mood and full intention of
the speaker of any in the whole works of Shakspeare. I
cherish the hope that I am mistaken, and that, becoming
wiser, I shall discover some profound excellence in that, in
which I now appear to detect an imperfection.
JULIUS CJESAR.
Act i. sc. I.
Mar. What meanest thou by that ? Mend me, thou saucy
fellow !
The speeches of Flavins and Marullus are in blank verse.
Wherever regular metre can be rendered truly imitative of
character, passion, or personal rank, Shakspeare seldom,
if ever, neglects it. Hence this hne should be read : —
What mean'st by that ? mend me, thou saucy fellow !
I say regular metre : for even the prose has in the highest
and lowest dramatic personage, a Cobbler or a Hamlet, a
rhythm so felicitous and so severally appropriate, as to be
a virtual metre.
lb. sc. 2.
Bru. A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
If my ear does not deceive me, the metre of this line was
94 Notes on Julius Cassar
meant to express that sort of mild philosophic contempt,
characterizing Brutus even in his first casual speech. The
line is a trimeter, — each dipohia containing two accented
and two unaccented syllables, but variously arranged, as
thus ; —
u — — u I — o u — I o — o —
A soothsayer | bids you beware I the Ides of March,
lb. Speech of Brutus :
Set honour in one eye, and death i' the other,
And I will look on both indifferently.
Warburton would read 'death' for 'both' ; but I prefer
the old text. There are here three things, the public
good, the individual Brutus' honour, and his death. The
latter two so balanced each other, that he could decide for
the first by equipoise ; nay — the thought growing — that
honour had more weight than death. That Cassius under-
stood it as Warburton, is the beauty of Cassius as con-
trasted with Brutus.
lb. Caesar's speech : —
He loves no plays.
As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music, &c
This is not a trivial observation, nor does our poet mean barely
by it, that Cassius was not a merry, sprightly man ; but that he
had not a due temperament of harmony in his disposition. Theo-
bald's Note.
0 Theobald ! what a commentator wast thou, when thou
would' st affect to understand Shakspeare, instead of con-
tenting thyself with collating the text ! The meaning here
is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom.
lb. sc. 3. Casca's speech : —
Be factious for redress of all these griefs ;
And I will set this foot of mine as far,
As who goes farthest.
1 understand it thus : 'You have spoken as a con-
spirator ; be so in fact, and I will join you. Act on your
principles, and realize them in a fact.'
Act ii. sc. I. Speech of Brutus : —
It must be by his death ; and, for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him.
But for the general. He would be crown'd :
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
Notes on Julius Caesar 95
And, to speak truth of Caesax,
I have not known when his afiections sway'd
More than his reason.
So Caesar may ;
Then, lest he may, prevent.
This speech is singular ; — at least, I do not at present see
into Shakspeare's motive, his rationale, or in what point of
view he meant Brutus' character to appear. For surely —
(this, I mean, is what I say to myself, with my present
quantum of insight, only modified by my experience in how
many instances I have ripened into a perception of beauties,
where I had before descried faults ;) surely, nothing can
seem more discordant with our historical preconceptions of
Brutus, or more lowering to the intellect of the Stoico-
Platonic tyrannicide, than the tenets here attributed to
him — to him, the stern Roman repubUcan ; namely, — that
he would have no objection to a king, or to Caesar, a
monarch in Rome, would Caesar but be as good a monarch
as he now seems disposed to be ! How, too, could Brutus
say that he found no personal cause — none in Caesar's past
conduct cLs a man ? Had he not passed the Rubicon ?
Had he not entered Rome as a conqueror ? Had he not
placed his Gauls in the Senate ? — Shakspeare, it may be
said, has not brought these things forwards — True ; — and
this is just the ground of my perplexity. What character
did Shakspeare mean his Brutus to be ?
lb. Speech of Brutus : —
For if thou path, thy native semblance on —
Surely, there need be no scruple in treating this 'path'
as a mere misprint or mis-script for 'put.' In what place
does Shakspeare, — where does any other writer of the same
age — use 'path' as a verb for 'walk ?'
lb. sc. 2. Caesar's speech : —
She dreamt last night, she saw my statue —
No doubt, it should be statua, as in the same age, they more
often pronounced 'heroes' as a trisyllable than dissyllable.
A modern tragic poet would have written, —
Last night she dreamt, that she my statue saw —
But Shakspeare never avails himself of the supposed
license of transposition, merely for the metre. There is
always some logic either of thought or passion to justify it.
96 Notes on Julius Caesar
Act iii. sc. I. Antony's speech : —
Pardon me, Julius — here wast thou bay'd, brave hart ;
Here didst thou fall ; and here thy hunters stand
Sign'd in thy spoil, and crimson' d in thy death.
O world I thou wast the forest to this hart,
And this, indeed, O world ! the heart of thee.
I doubt the genuineness of the last two lines ; — not because
they are vile ; but first, on account of the rhythm, which is
not Shakspearian, but just the very tune of some old play,
from which the actor might have interpolated them ; —
and secondly, because they interrupt, not only the sense
and connection, but likewise the flow both of the passion,
and, (what is with me still more decisive) of the Shak-
spearian link of association. As with many another
parenthesis or gloss slipt into the text, we have only to read
the passage without it, to see that it never was in it. I
venture to say there is no instance in Shakspeare fairly
like this. Conceits he has ; but they not only rise out of
some word in the lines before, but also lead to the thought
in the lines following. Here the conceit is a mere alien :
Antony forgets an image, when he is even touching it, and
then recollects it, when the thought last in his mind must
have led him away from it.
Act iv. sc. 3. Speech of Brutus : —
What, shall one of us,
That struck the foremost man of all this world.
But for supporting robbers.
This seemingly strange assertion of Brutus is unhappily
verified in the present day. What is an immense army, in
which the lust of plunder has quenched all the duties of the
citizen, other than a horde of robbers, or differenced only
as fiends are from ordinarily reprobate men ? Caesar sup-
ported, and was supported by, such as these ; — and even so
Buonaparte in our days.
I know no part of Shakspeare that more impresses on
me the belief of his genius being superhuman, than this
scene between Brutus and Cassius. In the Gnostic heresy
it might have been credited with less absurdity than
most of their dogrnas, that the Supreme had employed
him to create, previously to his function of representing,
characters.
Notes on Antony and Cleopatra 97
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
Shakspeare can be complimented only by comparison
with himself : all other eulogies are either heterogeneous,
as when they are in reference to Spenser or Milton ; or they
are fiat truisms, as when he is gravely preferred to Comeille,
Racine, or even his own immediate successors, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Massinger and the rest. The highest praise,
or rather form of praise, of this play, which I can offer in
my own mind, is the doubt which the perusal always
occasions in me, whether the Antony and Cleopatra is not,
in all exhibitions of a giant power in its strength and vigour
of maturity, a formidable rival of Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet,
and Othello. Feliciter audax is the motto for its style com-
paratively with that of Shakspeare' s other works, even as
it is the general motto of all his works compared with those
of other poets. Be it remembered, too, that this happy
valiancy of style is but the representative and result of all
the material excellencies so expressed.
This play should be perused in mental contrast with
Romeo and Juliet ; — as the love of passion and appetite
opposed to the love of affection and instinct. But the art
displayed in the character of Cleopatra is profound ; in
this, especially, that the sense of criminality in her passion
is lessened by our insight into its depth and energy, at the
very moment that we cannot but perceive that the passion
itself springs out of the habitual craving of a licentious
nature, and that it is supported and reinforced by voluntary
stimulus and sought-for associations, instead of blossoming
out of spontaneous emotion.
Of all Shakspeare' s historical plays, Antony and Cleo-
patra is by far the most wonderful. There is not one in
which he has followed history so minutely, and yet there
are few in which he impresses the notion of angelic strength
so much ; — perhaps none in which he impresses it more
strongly. This is greatly owing to the manner in which the
fiery force is sustained throughout, and to the numerous
momentary flashes of nature counteracting the historic
abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the way in which
Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the
last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel
the judgment as well as the genius of Shakspeare in your
98 Notes on Antony and Cleopatra
heart's core, compare this astonishing drama with Dryden's
All For Love.
Act i. sc. I. Philo's speech :
His captain's heart
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper —
It should be 'reneagues/ or 'reniegues/ as 'fatigues/ &c.
lb.
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform' d
Into a strumpet's fool.
Warburton's conjecture of 'stool' is ingenious, and would
be a probable reading, if the scene opening had discovered
Antony with Cleopatra on his lap. But, represented as
he is walking and jesting with her, 'fool' must be the word.
Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he
confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The 'pillar'
of a state is so common a metaphor as to have lost the
image in the thing meant to be imaged,
lb. sc. 2.
Much is breeding ;
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life,
And not a serpent's poison.
This is so far true to appearance, that a horse-hair,
*laid,' as Hollinshed says, 'in a pail of water,' will become
the supporter of seemingly one worm, though probably
of an immense number of small sUmy water-lice. The
hair will twirl round a finger, and sensibly compress it.
It is a common experiment with school boys in Cumberland
and Westmorland.
Act. ii. sc. 2. Speech of Enobarbus : —
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers.
I have the greatest difficulty in beheving that Shakspeare
wrote the first 'mermaids.' He never, I think, would have
so weakened by useless anticipation the fine image im-
mediately following. The epithet 'seeming' becomes so
extremely improper after the whole number had been posi-
tively called 'so many mermaids.'
Notes on Timon of Athens 99
TIMON OF ATHENS.
Act i. sc. I.
Tim. The man is honest.
Old Ath. Therefore he will be, Timon.
His honesty rewards him in itself
Warburton's comment — *If the man be honest, for that
reason he will be so in this, and not endeavour at the
injustice of gaining my daughter without my consent' — is,
like almost all his comments, ingenious in blunder ; he
can never see any other writer's thoughts for the mist-
working swarm of his own. The meaning of the first line
the poet himself explains, or rather unfolds, in the second.
'The man is honest !' — 'True ; — and for that very cause,
and with no additional or extrinsic motive, he will be so.
No man can be justly called honest, who is not so for
honesty's sake, itself including its own reward.' Note,
that 'honesty' in Shakspeare's age retained much of its
old dignity, and that contradistinction of the honestum
from the utile, in which its very essence and definition
consists. If it be honestum, it cannot depend on the utile.
lb. Speech of Apemantus, printed as prose in Theo-
bald's edition : —
So, so ! aches contract, and starve your supple joints !
I may remark here the fineness of Shakspeare's sense
of musical period, which would almost by itself have
suggested (if the hundred positive proofs had not been
extant,) that the word 'aches' was then ad libitum, a
dissyllable — aitches. For read it, 'aches,' in this sentence,
and I would challenge you to find any period in Shakspeare's
writings with the same musical or, rather dissonant, nota-
tion. Try the one, and then the other, by your ear, reading
the sentence aloud, first with the word as a dissyllable and
then as a monosyllable, and you will feel what I mean.^
1 It is, of course, a verse, —
Achfes contract, and starve your supple joints, —
and is so printed in all later editions. But Mr. C. was reading it in prose in Theobald;
and it is curious to see how his ear detected the rhythmical necessity for pronouncing
' aches ' as a dissyllable, although the metrical necessity seems for the moment to have
escaped him. Ed.
lOO Notes on Timon of Athens
lb. sc. 2. Cupid's speech : Warburton's correction
of—
There taste, touch, all pleas' d from thy table rise —
into
Th' ear, taste, touch, smell, &c.
This is indeed an excellent emendation.
Act. ii. sc. I. Senator's speech : —
— nor then silenc'd when
• Commend me to your master' — and the cap
Plays in the right hand, thus : —
Either, methinks, 'plays' should be 'play'd/ or 'and'
should be changed to 'while.' I can certainly understand
it as a parenthesis, an interadditive of scorn ; but it does
not sound to my ear as in Shakspeare's manner,
lb. sc. 2. Timon's speech : (Theobald.)
And that unaptness made you minister,
Thus to excuse yourself.
Read your ; — at least I cannot otherwise understand the
line. You made my chance indisposition and occasional
unaptness your minister — that is, the ground on which
you now excuse yourself. Or, perhaps, no correction
is necessary, if we construe 'made you' as 'did you make ;'
'and that unaptness did you make help you thus to excuse
yourself.' But the former seems more in Shakspeare's
manner, and is less Hable to be misunderstood.^
Act iii. sc. 3. Servant's speech : —
How fairly this lord strives to appear foul ! — takes virtuous
copies to be wicked ; like those that under hot, ardent, zeal would
set whole realms on fire. Of such a nature is his politic love.
This latter clause I grievously suspect to have been an
addition of the players, which had hit, and, being con-
stantly applauded, procured a settled occupancy in the
prompter's copy. Not that Shakspeare does not elsewhere
sneer at the Puritans ; but here it is introduced so nolenter
volenfer (excuse the phrase) by the head and shoulders ! —
and is besides so much more likely to have been conceived
in the age of Charles I.
Act iv. sc. 2. Timon's speech : —
Raise me this beggar, and deny't that lord. —
Warburton reads 'denude.'
1 ' Vour ' is the received reading; now. Ed.
Notes on Romeo and Juliet loi
I cannot see the necessity of this alteration. The
editors and commentators are, all of them, ready enough
to cry out against Shakspeare's laxities and licenses of
style, forgetting that he is not merely a poet, but a dramatic
poet ; that, when the head and the heart are swelling
with fulness, a man does not ask himself whether he has
grammatically arranged, but only whether (the context
taken in) he has conveyed, his meaning. 'Deny' is here
clearly equal to 'withhold ;' and the *it/ quite in the
genius of vehement conversation, which a syntaxist ex-
plains by ellipses and suhauditurs in a Greek or Latin
classic, yet triumphs over as ignorances in a contemporary,
refers to accidental and artificial rank or elevation, implied
in the verb 'raise.' Besides, does the word 'denude' occur
in any writer before, or of, Shakspeare's age ?
ROMEO AND JULIET.
I HAVE previously had occasion to speak at large on the
subject of the three unities of time, place, and action, as
applied to the drama in the abstract, and to the particular
stage for which Shakspeare wrote, as far as he can be said
to have written for any stage but that of the universal
mind. I hope I have in some measure succeeded in
demonstrating that the former two, instead of being rules,
were mere inconveniences attached to the local peculiarities
of the Athenian drama ; that the last alone deserved the
name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this
unity Shakspeare stood pre-eminent. Yet, instead of
unity of action, I should greatly prefer the more appro-
priate, though scholastic and uncouth, words homogeneity,
proportionateness, and totahty of interest, — expressions,
which involve the distinction, or rather the essential
difference, betwixt the shaping skill of mechanical talent,
and the creative, productive, life-power of inspired genius.
In the former each part is separately conceived, and then
by a succeeding act put together ; — not as watches are
made for wholesale — (for there each part supposes a pre-
conception of the whole in some mind) — but more like
pictures on a motley screen. Whence arises the harmony
that strikes us in the wildest natural landscapes, —
in the relative shapes of rocks, the harmony of colours
I02 Notes on Romeo and Juliet
in the heaths, ferns, and Uchens, the leaves of the
beech and the oak, the stems and rich brown branches of
the birch and other mountain trees, varying from verging
autumn to returning spring, — compared with the visual
effect from the greater number of artificial plantations ?
— From this, that the natural landscape is effected, as it
were, by a single energy modified ah intra in each com-
ponent part. And as this is the particular excellence of
the Shakspearian drama generally, so is it especially
characteristic of the Romeo and Juliet.
The groundwork of the tale is altogether in family life,
and the events of the play have their first origin in family
feuds. Filmy as are the eyes of party-spirit, at once dim
and truculent, still there is commonly some real or supposed
object in view, or principle to be maintained ; and though
but the twisted wires on the plate of rosin in the prepara-
tion for electrical pictures, it is still a guide in some degree,
an assimilation to an outline. But in family quarrels,
which have proved scarcely less injurious to states, wilful-
ness, and precipitancy, and passion from mere habit and
custom, can alone be expected. With his accustomed
judgment, Shakspeare has begun by placing before us a
lively picture of all the impulses of the play ; and, as
nature ever presents two sides, one for Heraclitus, and one
for Democritus, he has, by way of prelude, shown the
laughable absurdity of the evil by the contagion of it
reaching the servants, who have so little to do with it, but
who are under the necessity of letting the superfluity of
sensoreal power fly off through the escape-valve of wit-
combats, and of quarrelling with weapons of sharper edge,
all in humble imitation of their masters. Yet there is a
sort of unhired fidelity, an ourishness about all this that
makes it rest pleasant on one's feelings. All the first scene,
down to the conclusion of the Priace's speech, is a motley
dance of all ranks and ages to one tune, as if the horn of
Huon had been pla5dng behind the scenes.
Benvolio's speech —
Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun
Peer'd forth the golden window of the east —
and, far more strikingly, the following speech of old
Montague —
Many a morning hath he there been seen
With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew-
Notes on Romeo and Juliet 103
prove that Shakspeare meant the Romeo and Juliet to
approach to a poem, which, and indeed its early date, ma^r
be also inferred from the multitude of rhyming couplets
throughout. And if we are right, from the internal
evidence, in pronouncing this one of Shakspeare's early
dramas, it affords a strong instance of the fineness of his
insight into the nature of the passions, that Romeo is
introduced already love-bewildered. The necessity of
loving creates an object for itself in man and woman ; and
yet there is a difference in this respect between the sexes,
though only to be known by a perception of it. It would
have displeased us if Juliet had been represented as already
in love, or as fancying herself so ; — but no one, I believe,
ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his
Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of
his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for
JuHet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy ; and
we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in
a love of his own making, which is never shown where love
is really near the heart.
When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires !
♦ * « *
One fairer than my love ! the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match, since first the world begun.
The character of the Nurse is the nearest of any thing in
Shakspeare to a direct borrowing from mere observation ;
and the reason is, that as in infancy and childhood the
individual in nature is a representative of a class, — just as
in describing one larch tree, you generalize a grove of them,
— so it is nearly as much so in old age. The generalization
is done to the poet's hand. Here you have the garrulity
of age strengthened by the feelings of a long-trusted
servant, whose sympathy with the mother's affections
gives her privileges and rank in the household ; and observe
the mode of connection by accidents of time and place, and
the childHke fondness of repetition in a second childhood,
and also that happy, humble, ducking under, yet constant
resurgence against, the check of her superiors ! —
Yes, madam ! — Yet I cannot choose but laugh, &c.
In the fourth scene we have Mercutio introduced to us.
0 ! how shall I describe that exquisite ebullience and
104 Notes on Romeo and Juliet
overflow of youthful life, wafted on over the laughing waves
of pleasure and prosperity, as a wanton beauty that dis-
torts the face on which she knows her lover is gazing
enraptured, and wrinkles her forehead in the triumph of
its smoothness ! Wit ever wakeful, fancy busy and pro-
creative as an insect, courage, an easy mind that, without
cares of its own, is at once disposed to laugh away those of
others, and yet to be interested in them, — these and all
congenial qualities, melting into the common copula of
them all, the man of rank and the gentleman, with all its
excellences and all its weaknesses, constitute the character
of Mercutio !
Act i. sc. 5.
Tyh. It fits when such a villain is a guest ;
I'll not endure him.
Cap. He shall be endur'd.
What, goodman boy ! — I say, he shall : — Go to ; —
Am I the master he*re, or you ? — Go to.
You'll not endure him ! — God shall mend my soul —
You'll make a mutiny among my guests !
You will set cock-a-hoop ! you'll be the man 1
Tyb. Why, uncle, 'tis a shame.
Cap. Go to, go to.
You are a saucy boy ! &c. —
How admirable is the old man's impetuosity at once
contrasting, yet harmonized, with young Tybalt's quarrel-
some violence ! But it would be endless to repeat observa-
tions of this sort. Every leaf is different on an oak tree ;
but still we can only say — our tongues defrauding our eyes
— 'This is another oak-leaf!*
Act ii. sc. 2. The garden scene :
Take notice in this enchanting scene of the contrast of
Romeo's love with his former fancy ; and v/eigh the skill
shown in justifjdng him from his inconstancy by making
us feel the difference of his passion. Yet this, too, is a love
in, although not merely of, the imagination.
lb.
Jul. Well, do not swear ; although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night :
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, &c.
With love, pure love, there is always an anxiety for the
safety of the object, a disinterestedness, by which it is
distinguished from the counterfeits of its name. Compare
Notes on Romeo and Juliet 105
this scene with Act iii. sc. i. of the Tempest. I do not
know a more wonderful instance of Shakspeare's mastery
in playing a distinctly rememberable variety on the same
remembered air, than in the transporting love confessions
of Romeo and JuHet and Ferdinand and Miranda. There
seems more passion in the one, and more dignity in the
other ; yet you feel that the sweet girHsh lingering and busy
movement of Juhet, and the calmer and more maidenly
fondness of Miranda, might easily pass into each other.
lb. sc. 3. The Friar's speech : —
The reverend character of the Friar, hke all Shakspeare's
representations of the great professions, is very delightful
and tranquillizing, yet it is no digression, but immediately
necessary to the carrying on of the plot.
lb. sc. 4.
Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give
you ? &c.
Compare again, Romeo's half-exerted, and half-real,
ease of mind with his first manner when in love with
Rosaline ! His will had come to the clenching point.
lb. sc. 6.
Rom. Do thou but close our hands with holy words.
Then love-devouring death do what he dare,
It is enough I may but call her mine.
The precipitancy, which is the character of the play, is
well marked in this short scene of waiting for Juliet's
arrival.
Act iii. sc. I.
Mer. No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church
door ; but 'tis enough : 'twill serve : ask for me to-morrow, and
you shall find me a grave man, &c.
How fine an effect the wit and raillery habitual to Mer-
cutio, even struggling with his pain, give to Romeo's
following speech, and at the same time so completely
justifying his passionate revenge on Tybalt !
lb. Benvolio's speech :
But that he tilts
With piercing steel at bold Mercutio's breast.
This small portion of untruth in Benvolio's narrative
is finely conceived.
io6 Notes on Romeo and Juliet
lb. sc. 2. Juliet's speech :
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. —
Indeed the whole of this speech is imagination strained
to the highest ; and observe the blessed effect on the purity
of the mind. What would Dryden have made of it ? —
lb.
Nurse. Shame come to Romeo.
Jul. Blister' d be thy tongue
For such a wish !
Note the Nurse's mistake of the mind's audible struggles
with itself for its decision in toto.
lb. sc. 3. Romeo's speech : —
'Tis torture, and not mercy : heaven is here.
Where Juliet lives, &c.
All deep passions are a sort of atheists, that believe no
future,
lb. sc. 5.
Cap. Soft, take me with you, take me with you, wife —
How ! will she none ? &c.
A noble scene ! Don't I see it with my own eyes ? —
Yes ! but not with Juliet's. And observe in Capulet's
last speech in this scene his mistake, as if love's causes
were capable of being generalized.
Act iv. sc. 3. Juliet's speech : —
O, look ! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point : — Stay, Tybalt, stay ! —
Romeo, I come ! this do I drink to thee.
Shakspeare provides for the finest decencies. It would
have been too bold a thing for a girl of fifteen ; — but she
swallows the draught in a fit of fright.
lb. sc. 5.
As the audience know that Juliet is not dead, this scene
is, perhaps, excusable. But it is a strong warning to
minor dramatists not to introduce at one time many
separate characters agitated by one and the same circum-
stance. It is difficult to understand what effect, whether
that of pity or of laughter, Shakspeare meant to produce ;
— the occasion and the characteristic speeches are so
Shakspeare's Historical Plays 107
little in harmony ! For example, what the Nurse says is
excellently suited to the Nurse's character, but grotesquely
unsuited to the occasion.
Act V. sc. I. Romeo's speech : —
O mischief ! thou art swift
To enter in the thoughts of desperate men 1
I do remember an apothecary, &c.
This famous passage is so beautiful as to be self-justified ;
yet, in addition, what a fine preparation it is for the tomb
scene !
lb. sc. 3. Romeo's speech : —
Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man.
Fly hence and leave me.
The gentleness of Romeo was shown before, as softened
by love ; and now it is doubled by love and sorrow and
awe of the place where he is.
lb. Romeo's speech : —
How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry ! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O, how may I
Call this a lightning ? — O, my love, my wife ! &c.
Here, here, is the master example how beauty can at
once increase and modify passion !
lb. Last scene.
How beautiful is the close ! The spring and the winter
meet ; — winter assumes the character of spring, and spring
the sadness of winter.
SHAKSPEARE'S ENGLISH HISTORICAL
PLAYS.
The first form of poetry is the epic, the essence of which
may be stated as the successive in events and characters.
This must be distinguished from narration, in which there
must always be a narrator, from whom the objects re-
presented receive a colouring and a manner ; — whereas in
the epic, as in the so called poems of Homer, the whole
is completely objective, and the representation is a pure
reflection. The next form into which poetry passed was
io8 Shakspeare's English
the dramatic ; — both forms having a common basis with
a certain difference, and that difference not consisting in
the dialogue alone. Both are founded on the relation of
providence to the human will ; and this relation is the
universal element, expressed under different points of view
according to the difference of religion, and the moral and
intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic
poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making
it instrumental to the accomplishment of its designs : —
Albs S^ TeXetero jSouXij.
In the drama, the wiU is exhibited as struggling with fate,
a great and beautiful instance and illustration of which is
the Prometheus of iEschylus ; and the deepest effect is
produced, when the fate is represented as a higher and
intelligent will, and the opposition of the individual as
springing from a defect.
In order that a drama may be properly historical, it is
necessary that it should be the history of the people to
whom it is addressed. In the composition, care must be
taken that there appear no dramatic improbability, as the
reality is taken for granted. It must, likewise, be
poetical ; — that only, I mean, must be taken which is the
permanent in our nature, which is common, and therefore
deeply interesting to all ages. The events themselves are
immaterial, otherwise than as the clothing and manifesta-
tion of the spirit that is working within. In this mode, the
unity resulting from succession is destroyed, but is supplied
by a unity of a higher order, which connects the events by
reference to the workers, gives a reason for them in the
motives, and presents men in their causative character.
It takes, therefore, that part of real history which is the
least known, and infuses a principle of life and organization
into the naked facts, and makes them all the framework of
an animated whole.
In my happier days, while I had yet hope and onward-
looking thoughts, I planned an historical drama of King
Stephen, in the manner of Shakspeare. Indeed it would
be desirable that some man of dramatic genius should
dramatize all those omitted by Shakspeare, as far down as
Henry VII. Perkin Warbeck would make a most interest-
ing drama. A few scenes of Marlow's Edward II. might
be preserved. After Henry VIII., the events are too weU
Historical Plays 109
and distinctly known, to be, without plump inverisimili-
tude, crowded together in one night's exhibition. Where-
as, the history of our ancient kings — the events of their
reigns, I mean, — are like stars in the sky ; — whatever the
real interspaces may be, and however great, they seem
close to each other. The stars — the events — strike us and
remain in our eye, little modified by the difference of dates.
An historic drama is, therefore, a collection of events
borrowed from history, but connected together in respect
of cause and time, poetically and by dramatic fiction. It
would be a fine national custom to act such a series of
dramatic histories in orderly succession, in the yearly
Christmas holidays, and could not but tend to counteract
that mock cosmopolitism, which under a positive term
really implies nothing but a negation of, or indifference to,
the particular love of our country. By its nationality
must every nation retain its independence ; — I mean a
nationality quoad the nation. Better thus ; — nationality
in each individual, quoad his country, is equal to the sense
of individuality quoad himself ; but himself as subsen-
suous, and central. Patriotism is equal to the sense of
individuality reflected from every other individual. There
may come a higher virtue in both — just cosmopolitism.
But this latter is not possible but by antecedence of the
former.
Shakspeare has included the most important part of
nine reigns in his historical dramas — namely — King John,
Richard II.— Henry IV. (two)— Henry V.— Henry VI.
(three) including Edward V. and Henry VIII., in all ten
plays. There remain, therefore, to be done, with the
exception of a single scene or two that should be adopted
from Marlow — eleven reigns — of which the first two appear
the only unpromising subjects ; — and those two dramas
must be formed whoUy or mainly of invented private
stories, which, however, could not have happened except
in consequence of the events and measures of these reigns,
and which should furnish opportunity both of exhibiting
the manners and oppressions of the times, and of narrating
dramatically the great events ; — if possible, the death of
the two sovereigns, at least of the latter, should be made
to have some influence on the finale of the story. All the
rest are glorious subjects ; especially Henry ist. (being
the struggle between the men of arms and of letters, in the
no Shakspeare's English
persons of Henry and Becket,) Stephen, Richard I.,
Edward II., and Henry VII.
KING JOHN.
Act i. sc. I.
Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile ?
Gur. Good leave, good Philip.
Bast. Philip ? sparrow I James, &c.
Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of 'spare me.'
0 true Warburton ! and the sanota simplicitas of honest
dull Theobald's faith in him ! Nothing can be more
hvely or characteristic than 'Philip? Sparrow!' Had
Warburton read old Skelton's 'Philip Sparrow,' an ex-
quisite and original poem, and, no doubt, popular in
Shakspeare's time, even Warburton would scarcely have
made so deep a plunge into the bathetic as to have deathified
'sparrow' into 'spare me!'
Act iii. sc. 2. Speech of Faulconbridge : —
Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot ;
Some airy devil hovers in the sky, &c.
Theobald adopts Warburton's conjecture of 'fiery.'
1 prefer the old text : the word 'devil' implies 'fiery.'
You need only read the line, laying a full and strong
emphasis on 'devil,' to perceive the uselessness and taste-
iessness of W^ar burton's alteration.
RICHARD II.
I HAVE stated that the transitional link between the epic
poem and the drama is the historic drama ; that in the
epic poem a pre-announced fate gradually adjusts and
employs the will and the events as its instruments, whilst
the drama, on the other hand, places fate and will in
opposition to each other, and is then most perfect, when
the victory of fate is obtained in consequence of imperfec-
tions in the opposing will, so as to leave a final impression
that the fate itself is but a higher and a more intelhgent
will.
Historical Plays iii
From the length of the speeches, and the circumstance
that, with one exception, the events are all historical, and
presented in their results, not produced by acts seen by,
or taking place before, the audience, this tragedy is ill
suited to our present large theatres. But in itself, and
for the closet, I feel no hesitation in placing it as the first
and most admirable of all Shakspeare's purely historical
plays. For the two parts of Henry IV. form a species of
themselves, which may be named the mixed drama. The
distinction does not depend on the mere quantity of
historical events in the play compared with the fictions ;
for there is as much history in Macbeth as in Richard,
but in the relation of the history to the plot. In the purely
historical plays, the history forms the plot ; in the mixed,
it directs it ; in the rest, as Macbeth, Hamlet, C5nTibeline,
Lear, it subserves it. But, however unsuited to the stage
this drama may be, God forbid that even there it should
fall dead on the hearts of jacobinized Englishmen ! Then,
indeed, we might say — -prcBteriit gloria mundi ! For the
spirit of patriotic reminiscence is the all-permeating soul
of this noble work. It is, perhaps, the most purely
historical of Shakspeare's dramas. There are not in it,
as in the others, characters introduced merely for the
purpose of giving a greater individuality and realness,
as in the comic parts of Henry IV., by presenting, as it
were, our very selves. Shakspeare avails himself of every
opportunity to effect the great object of the historic
drama, that, namely, of familiarizing the people to the
great names of their country, and thereby of exciting a
steady patriotism, a love of just liberty, and a respect for
aU those fundamental institutions of social hfe, which bind
men together : —
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle.
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise ;
This fortress, built by nature for herself,
Against infection, and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world
This precious stone set in the silver sea.
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a home,
Against the envy of less happier lands ;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth, &c.
112 Shakspeare's English
Add the famous passage in King John : —
This England never did, nor ever shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms.
And we shall shock them : nought shall make us rue.
If England to itself do rest but true.
And it certainly seems that Shakspeare's historic dramas
produced a very deep effect on the minds of the EngUsh
people, and in earUer times they were familiar even to the
least informed of all ranks, according to the relation of
Bishop Corbett. Marlborough, we know, was not ashamed
to confess that his principal acquaintance with English
history was derived from them ; and I believe that a large
part of the information as to our old names and achieve-
ments even now abroad is due, directly or indirectly, to
Shakspeare.
Admirable is the judgment with which Shakspeare
cdways in the first scenes prepares, yet how naturally, and
with what concealment of art, for the catastrophe. Observe
how he here presents the germ of all the after events
in Richard's insincerity, partiality, arbitrariness, and
favoritism, and in the proud, tempestuous, temperament
of his barons. In the very beginning, also, is displayed
that feature in Richard's character, which is never for-
gotten throughout the play — his attention to decorum,
and high feeling of the kingly dignity. These anticipations
show with what judgment Shakspeare wrote, and illustrate
his care to connect the past and future, and unify them
with the present by forecast and reminiscence.
It is interesting to a critical ear to compare the six open-
ing lines of the play —
Old John of Gaunt, time-honour' d Lancaster,
Hast thou, according to thy oath and band, &c.
each closing at the tenth syllable, with the rhythmless
metre of the verse in Henry VI. and Titus Andronicus, in
order that the difference, indeed, the heterogeneity, of the
two may be felt etiam in simillimis prima siiperficie. Here
the weight of the single words supplies all the rehef afforded
by intercurrent verse, while the whole represents the mood.
Historical Plays 113
And compare the apparently defective metre of Boling-
broke's first line, —
Many years of happy days befall —
with Prospero's,
Twelve years since, Miranda ! twelve years since —
The actor should supply the time by emphasis, and pause
on the first syllable of each of these verses.
Act i. sc. I. Bolingbroke's speech : —
First, (heaven be the record to my speech !)
In the devotion of a subject's love, &c.
I remember in the Sophoclean drama no more striking
example of the ro Trpivov %ai 6ifjjvov than this speech ;
and the rh57mes in the last six lines well express the pre-
concertedness of Bolingbroke's scheme so beautifully
contrasted with the vehemence and sincere irritation of
Mowbray.
lb. Bolingbroke's speech : —
Which blood, like sacrificing Abel's, cries.
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,
To me, for justice and rough chastisement.
Note the bimv of this 'to me,' which is evidently felt by
Richard : —
How high a pitch his resolution soars 1
and the affected depreciation afterwards ; —
As he is but my father's brother's son.
lb. Mowbray's speech : —
In haste whereof, most heartily I pray
Your highness to aissign our trial day.
The occasional interspersion of rhymes, and the more
frequent winding up of a speech therewith — what purpose
was this designed to answer ? In the earnest drama, I
mean. Deliberateness ? An attempt, ais in Mowbray,
to collect himself and be cool at the close ? — I can see that
in the following speeches the rhyme answers the end of the
Greek chorus, and distinguishes the general truths from
the passions of the dialogue ; but this does not exactly
justify the practice, which is unfrequent in proportion to
the excellence of Shakspeare's plays. One thing, however.
114 Shakspeare's English
is to be observed, — that the speakers are historical, known,
and so far formal, characters, and their reality is already
a fact. This should be borne in mind. The whole of this
scene of the quarrel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke
seems introduced for the purpose of showing by anticipa-
tion the characters of Richard and Bolingbroke. In the
latter there is observable a decorous and courtly checking
of his anger in subservience to a predetermined plan,
especially in his calm speech after receiving sentence of
banishment compared with Mowbray's unaffected lamenta-
tion. In the one, all is ambitious hope of something yet
to come ; in the other it is desolation and a looking
backward of the heart,
lb. sc. 2.
Gaunt. Heaven's is the quarrel ; for heaven's substitute.
His deputy anointed in his right,
Hath caus'd his death : the which, ii wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge ; for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister.
Without the hollow extravagance of Beaumont and
Fletcher's ultra-royalism, how carefully does Shakspeare
acknowledge and reverence the eternal distinction between
the mere individual, and the symbolic or representative,
on which all genial law, no less than patriotism, depends.
The whole of this second scene commences, and is anti-
cipative of, the tone and character of the play at large.
lb. sc. 3. In none of Shakspeare's fictitious dramas, or
in those founded on a history as unknown to his auditors
generally as fiction, is this violent rupture of the succession
of time found : — a proof, I think, that the pure historic
drama, like Richard II. and King John, had its own laws.
lb. Mowbray's speech : —
A dearer merit
Have I deserved at your highness' hands.
O, the instinctive propriety of Shakspeare in the choice
of words !
lb. Richard's speech :
Nor never by advised purpose meet,
To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,
'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.
Already the selfish weakness of Richard's character
Historical Plays 115
opens. Nothing will such minds so readily embrace, as
indirect ways softened down to their quasi-consciences
by policy, expedience, &c.
lb. Mowbray's speech : —
' All the world's my way.*
' The world was all before him.' — Milt.
lb.
Baling. How long a time lies in our little word !
Four lagging winters, and four wanton springs,
End in a word : such is the breath of kings.
Admirable anticipation !
lb. sc. 4. This is a striking conclusion of a first act, —
letting the reader into the secret ; — having before impressed
us with the dignified and kingly manners of Richard, yet
by well managed anticipations leading us on to the full
gratification of pleasure in our own penetration. In this
scene a new light is thrown on Richard's character. Until
now he has appeared in all the beauty of royalty ; but
here, as soon as he is left to himself, the inherent weakness
of his character is immediately shown. It is a weakness,
however, of a pecuhar kind, not arising from want of
personal courage, or any specific defect of faculty, but
rather an intellectual feminineness, which feels a necessity
of ever leaning on the breasts of others, and of reclining on
those who are aU the while known to be inferiors. To this
must be attributed as its consequences aU Richard's vices,
his tendency to concealment, and his cunning, the whole
operation of which is directed to the getting rid of present
difficulties. Richard is not meant to be a debauchee ;
but we see in him that sophistry which is common to man,
by which we can deceive our own hearts, and at one and
the same time apologize for, and yet commit, the error.
Shakspeare has represented this character in a very
peculiar manner. He has not made him amiable with
counterbalancing faults ; but has openly and broadly
drawn those faults without reserve, relying on Richard's
disproportionate sufferings and gradually emergent good
qualities for our sympathy ; and this was possible, because
his faults are not positive vices, but spring entirely from
defect of character.
Act ii. sc. I.
K. Rich. Can sick men play so nicely with their names ?
ii6 Shakspeare's English
Yes ! on a death-bed there is a feeling which may make
all things appear but as puns and equivocations. And a
passion there is that carries off its own excess by plays on
words as naturally, and, therefore, as appropriately to
drama, as by gesticulations, looks, or tones. This belongs
to human nature as such, independently of associations
and habits from any particular rank of hfe or mode of
employment ; and in this consists Shakspeare's vulgarisms,
as in Macbeth' s —
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon ! &c.
This is (to equivocate on Dante's words) in truth the nohile
volgare eloqiienza. Indeed it is profoundly true that there
is a natural, an almost irresistible, tendency in the mind,
when immersed in one strong feeling, to connect that
feeling with every sight and object around it ; especially
if there be opposition, and the words addressed to it are
in any way repugnant to the feeling itself, as here in the
instance of Richard's unkind language :
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
No doubt, something of Shakspeare's punning must be
attributed to his age, in which direct and formal combats
of wit were a favourite pastime of the courtly and accom-
plished. It was an age more favourable, upon the whole,
to vigour of intellect than the present, in which a dread of
being thought pedantic dispirits and flattens the energies of
original minds. But independently of this, I have no
hesitation in saying that a pun, if it be congruous with the
feeling of the scene, is not only allowable in the dramatic
dialogue, but oftentimes one of the most effectual in-
tensives of passion.
K. Rich. Right ; you say true : as Hereford's love, so his ;
As theirs, so mine ; and all be as it is.
The depth of this compared with the first scene : —
How high a pitch, &c.
There is scarcely anything in Shakspeare in its degree,
more admirably drawn than York's character ; his religious
loyalty struggling with a deep grief and indignation at the
king's follies ; his adherence to his word and faith, once
given in spite of all, even the most natural, feelings. You
see in him the weakness of old age, and the oven.vhelming-
Historical Plays 117
ness of circumstances, for a time surmounting his sense of
duty, — the junction of both exhibited in his boldness in
words and feebleness in immediate act ; and then again
his effort to retrieve himself in abstract loyalty, even at the
heavy price of the loss of his son. This species of accidental
and adventitious weakness is brought into parallel with
Richard's continually increasing energy of thought, and
as constantly diminishing power of acting ; — and thus it
is Richard that breathes a harmony and a relation into all
the characters of the play.
lb. sc. 2.
Queen. To please the king I did ; to please myself
I cannot do it ; yet I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,
Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard : yet again, methinks,
Some unborn sorrow, ripe in sorrow's womb,
Is coming toward me ; and my inward soul
With nothing trembl-es : at something it grieves.
More than with parting from my lord the king.
It is clear that Shakspeare never meant to represent
Richard as a vulgar debauchee, but a man with a wanton-
ness of spirit in external show, a feminine friendism, an
intensity of woman-like love of those immediately about
him, and a mistaking of the delight of being loved by him
for a love of him. And mark in this scene Shakspeare's
gentleness in touching the tender superstitions, the
tence- incognitce of presentiments, in the human mind ; and
how sharp a line of distinction he commonly draws between
these obscure forecastings of general experience in each
individual, and the vulgar errors of mere tradition. Indeed
it may be taken once for all as the truth, that Shakspeare,
in the absolute universality of his genius, always rever-
ences whatever arises out of our moral nature ; he never
profanes his muse with a contemptuous reasoning away of
the genuine and general, however unaccountable, feelings
of mankind.
The amiable part of Richard's character is brought full
upon us by his queen's few words —
.... so sweet a guest
As my sweet Richard ; —
and Shakspeare has carefully shown in him an intense love of
his country, well-knowing how that feeling would, in a pure
ii8 Shakspeare's English
historic drama, redeem him in the hearts of the audience.
Yet even in this love there is something feminine and
personal : —
Deax earth, I do salute thee with my hand, —
As a long parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears, and smiles in meeting ;
So weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth.
And do thee favour with my royal hands.
With this is combined a constant overflow of emotions
from a total incapability of controlling them, and thence a
waste of that energy, which should have been reserved for
actions, in the passion and effort of mere resolves and
menaces. The consequence is moral exhaustion, and rapid
alternations of unmanly despair and ungrounded hope, —
every feeling being abandoned for its direct opposite upon
the pressure of external accident. And yet when Richard's
inward weakness appears to seek refuge in his despair, and
his exhaustion counterfeits repose, the old habit of kingU-
ness, the effect of flatterers from his infancy, is ever and
anon producing in him a sort of wordy courage which only
serves to betray more clearly his internal impotence. The
second and third scenes of the third act combine and
illustrate all this : —
A umerle. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss ;
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,
Grows strong and great, in substance, and in friends.
K, Rich. Discomfortable cousin ! know'st thou not.
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe, and lights the lower world.
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen.
In murders and in outrage, boldly here ;
But when, from under this terrestrial ball.
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,
And darts his light through every guilty hole.
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,
The cloke of night being pluck' d from off their backs.
Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves ?
So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, &c.
* * * *
Aumerle. Where is the Duke my father with his power ?
K. Rich. No matter where ; of comfort no man speak :
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, &c.
* * * *
Aumerle. My father hath a power, enquire of him ;
And learn to make a body of a limb.
Historical Plays 119
K. Rich. Thou chid'st me well : proud Bolingbroke, I come
To change blows with thee for our day of doom.
This ague-fit of fear is over-blown ;
An easy task it is to win our own,
* * * *
Scroop. Your uncle York is join'd with Bolingbroke. —
* * * *
K. Rich. Thou hast said enough,
Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth
Of that sweet way I was in to despair !
What say you now ? what comfort have we now ?
By heaven, I'll hate him everlastingly,
That bids me be of comfort any more.
* * ♦ *
Act iii. sc. 3. Bolingbroke's speech :
Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle, &c.
Observe the fine struggle of a haughty sense of power and
ambition in BoUngbroke with the necessity for dissimula-
tion.
lb. sc. 4. See here the skill and judgment of our poet in
giving reality and individual life, by the introduction of
accidents in his historic plays, and thereby making them
dramas, and not histories. How beautiful an islet of
repose — a melancholy repose, indeed — is this scene with
the Gardener and his Servant. And how truly affecting
and realizing is the incident of the very horse Barbary, in
the scene with the Groom in the last act ! —
Groom. I was a poor groom of thy stable. King,
When thou wert King ; who, travelling towards York,
With much ado, at length have gotten leave
To look upon my sometimes master's face.
O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld.
In London streets, that coronation day,
\^^len Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary !
That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid ;
That horse, that I so carefully have dress'd I
K. Rich. Rode he on Barbary ?
Bolingbroke's character, in general, is an instance how
Shakspeare makes one play introductory to another ; for
it is evidently a preparation for Henry IV., as Gloster
in the third part of Henry VI. is for Richard III.
I would once more remark upon the exalted idea of the
only true loyalty developed in this noble and impressive
play. We have neither the rants of Beaumont and
I20 Shakspeare's English
Fletcher, nor the sneers of Massinger ; — the vast import-
ance of the personal character of the sovereign is distinctly
enounced, whilst, at the same time, the genuine sanctity
which surrounds him is attributed to, and grounded on,
the position in which he stands as the convergence and
exponent of the life and power of the state.
The great end of the body politic appears to be to
humanize, and assist in the progressiveness of, the animal
man ; — but the problem is so complicated with contin-
gencies as to render it nearly impossible to lay down rules
for the formation of a state. And should we be able to
form a system of government, which should so balance its
different powers as to form a check upon each, and so
continually remedy and correct itself, it would, neverthe-
less, defeat its own aim ; — for man is destined to be guided
by higher principles, by universal views, which can never
be fulfilled in this state of existence, — by a spirit of pro-
gressiveness which can never be accomplished, for then it
would cease to be. Plato's Republic is like Bunyan's
Town of Man-Soul, — a description of an individual, all of
whose faculties are in their proper subordination and inter-
dependence ; and this it is assumed may be the prototype
of the state as one great individual. But there is this
sophism in it, that it is forgotten that the human faculties,
indeed, are parts and not separate things ; but that you
could never get chiefs who were wholly reason, ministers
who were wholly understanding, soldiers all wrath,
labourers all concupiscence, and so on through the rest.
Each of these partakes of, and interferes with, all the
others.
HENRY IV. PART I.
Act i. sc. I. King Henry's speech :
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood.
A MOST obscure passage : but I think Theobald's inter-
pretation right, namely, that 'thirsty entrance' means the
dry penetrability, or bibulous drought, of the soil. The
obscurity of this passage is of the Shakspearian sort.
lb. sc. 2. In this, the first introduction of Falstaff,
Historical Plays 121
observe the consciousness and the intentionality of his
wit, so that when it does not flow of its own accord, its
absence is felt, and an effort visibly made to recall it.
Note also throughout how Falstaff's pride is gratified in
the power of influencing a prince of the blood, the heir
apparent, by means of it. Hence his dishke to Prince John
of Lancaster, and his mortification when he finds his wit
fail on him : —
P. John. Fare you well, Falstaff : I, in my condition.
Shall better speak of you than you deserve.
Fal. I would you had but the wit ; 'twere better than your
dukedom. — Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth
not love me ; — nor a man cannot make him laugh.
Act ii. sc. I. Second Carrier's speech : —
.... breeds fleas like a loach.
Perhaps it is a misprint, or a provincial pronunciation,
for 'leach,' that is, blood-suckers. Had it been gnats,
instead of fleas, there might have been some sense, though
small probability, in Warbur ton's suggestion of the Scottish
*loch.' Possibly 'loach,' or 'lutch,' may be some lost
word for dovecote, or poultry-lodge, notorious for breeding
fleas. In Stevens's or my reading, it should properly be
'loaches,' or 'leeches,' in the plural ; except that I think
I have heard anglers speak of trouts hke a salmon.
Act iii. sc. I.
Glend. Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.
This 'nay' so to be dwelt on in speaking, as to be equiva-
lent to a dissyllable -u, is characteristic of the solemn
Glendower ; but the imperfect line
She bids you
On the wanton rushes lay you down, &c.
is one of those fine hair-strokes of exquisite judgment
peculiar to Shakspeare ; — thus detaching the Lady's
speech, and giving it the individuality and entireness of
a little poem, while he draws attention to it.
122 Shakspeare's English
HENRY IV. PART II.
Act ii. sc. 2.
P. Hen. Sup any women with him ?
Page. None, my lord, but old mistress Quickly, and mistress
Doll Tear-sheet.
» * 4: *
P. Hen. This Doll Tear-sheet should be some road.
I AM sometimes disposed to think that this respectable
young lady's name is a very old corruption for Tear-street —
street-walker, terere stratam (viam.) Does not the Prince's
question rather show this ? —
' This Doll Tear-street should be some road ? *
Act iii. sc. I. King Henry's speech :
Then, happy low, lie down ;
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
I know no argument by which to persuade any one to be
of my opinion, or rather of my feeling ; but yet I cannot
help feeling that 'Happy low-lie-down !' is either a pro-
verbial expression, or the burthen of some old song, and
means, 'Happy the man, who lays himself down on his
straw bed or chaff pallet on the ground or floor ! '
lb. sc. 2. Shallow's speech : —
Rah, tah, tah, would 'a say ; bounce, would 'a say, &c.
That Beaumont and Fletcher have more than once been
guilty of sneering at their great master, cannot, I fear, be
denied ; but the passage quoted by Theobald from the
Knight of the Burning Pestle is an imitation. If it be
chargeable with any fault, it is with plagiarism, not with
sarcasm.
HENRY V.
Act i. sc. 2. Westmoreland's speech : —
They know your grace hath cause, and means, and might ;
So hath your highness ; never King of England
Had nobles richer, &c.
Does 'grace' mean the king's own peculiar domains and
legal revenue, and 'highness' his feudal rights in the
Historical Plays 123
military service of his nobles ? — I have sometimes thought
it possible that the words 'grace* and 'cause' may have
been transposed in the copying or printing ; —
They know your cause hath grace, &c.
What Theobald meant, I cannot guess. To me his point-
ing makes the passage still more obscure. Perhaps the
lines ought to be recited dramatically thus :
They know your Grace hath cause, and means, and might : —
So hath your Highness — never King of England
Had nobles richer, &c.
He breaks off from the grammar and natural order from
earnestness, and in order to give the meaning more
passionately.
lb. Exeter's speech : —
Yet that is but a crush' d necessity.
Perhaps it may be 'crash' for 'crass' from crassus,
clumsy ; or it may be 'curt,' defective, imperfect : any-
thing would be better than Warburton's "scus'd,' which
honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the by, it seems
clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs to
Canterbury, and was altered by the actors for convenience.
Act iv. sc. 3. K. Henry's speech : —
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Should it not be 'live' in the first line ?
lb. sc. 5.
Const. O diable I
Orl. O seigneur ! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu t
Dan. Mart de ma vie ! all is confounded, all !
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sit mocking in our plumes ! — O meschante fortune I
Do not run away !
Ludicrous as these introductory scraps of French appear,
so instantly followed by good, nervous mother-English,
yet they are judicious, and produce the impression which
Shakspeare intended, — a sudden feeling struck at once on
the ears, as well as the eyes, of the audience, that 'here
come the French, the baffled French braggards !' — And
this will appear still more judicious, when we reflect on
the scanty apparatus of distinguishing dresses in Shak-
speare's tyring-room.
124 Shakspeare's English
HENRY VI. PART I.
Act i. sc. I. Bedford's speech : —
Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night I
Comets, importing change of times and states.
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky ;
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death !
King Henry the fifth, too famous to live long !
England ne'er lost a king of so much worths
Read aloud any two or three passages in blank verse even
from Shakspeare's earUest dramas, as Love's Labour's
Lost, or Romeo and Juliet ; and then read in the same
way this speech, with especial attention to the metre ;
and if you do not feel the impossibility of the latter having
been written by Shakspeare, all I dare suggest is, that you
may have ears, — for so has another animal, — but an ear
you cannot have, me judice.
RICHARD III.
This play should be contrasted with Richard II. Pride
of intellect is the characteristic of Richard, carried to the
extent of even boasting to his own mind of his villany,
whilst others are present to feed his pride of superiority ;
as in his first speech, act ii. sc. i. Shakspeare here, as in
aU his great parts, developes in a tone of sublime morality
the dreadful consequences of placing the moral, in sub-
ordination to the mere intellectual, being. In Richard
there is a predomincince of irony, accompanied with
apparently blunt manners to those immediately about
him, but formalized into a more set hypocrisy towards the
people as represented by their magistrates.
LEAR.
Of all Shakspeare's plays Macbeth is the most rapid,
Hamlet the slowest, in movement. Lear combines length
with rapidity, — hke the hurricane and the whirlpool,
absorbing while it advances. It begins as a stormy day
Historical Plays 125
in summer, with brightness ; but that brightness is lurid,
and anticipates the tempest.
It was not without forethought, nor is it without its due
significance, that the division of Lear's kingdom is in the
first six hues of the play stated as a thing already deter-
mined in all its particulars, previously to the trial of
professions, as the relative rewards of which the daughters
were to be made to consider their several portions. The
strange, yet by no means unnatural, mixture of selfishness,
sensibility, and habit of feeling derived from, and fostered
by, the particular rank and usages of the individual ; —
the intense desire of being intensely beloved, — selfish, and
yet characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly
nature alone ; — the self-supportless leaning for all pleasure
on another's breast ; — the craving after sympathy with a
prodigal disinterestedness, frustrated by its own ostenta-
tion, and the mode and nature of its claims ; — the anxiety,
the distrust, the jealousy, which more or less accompany
all selfish affections, and are amongst the surest contra-
distinctions of mere fondness from true love, and which
originate Lear's eager wish to enjoy his daughter's violent
professions, whilst the inveterate habits of sovereignty
convert the wish into claim and positive right, and an
incompliance with it into crime and treason ; — these facts,
these passions, these moral verities, on which the whole
tragedy is founded, are all prepared for, and will to the
retrospect be found implied, in these first four or five lines
of the play. They let us know that the trial is but a trick ;
and that the grossness of the old king's rage is in part the
natural result of a silly trick suddenly and most unex-
pectedly baffled and disappointed.
It may here be worthy of notice, that Lear is the only
serious performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situa-
tions of which are derived from the assumption of a gross
improbability ; whereas Beaumont and Fletcher's tra-
gedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of
the way accident or exception to the general experience
of mankind. But observe the matchless judgment of our
Shakspeare. First, improbable as the conduct of Lear
is in the first scene, yet it was an old story rooted in the
popular faith, — a thing taken for granted already, and
consequently without any of the effects of improbabiUty.
Secondly, it is merely the canvass for the characters and
126 Shakspeare's English
passions, — a mere occasion for, — and not, in the manner
of Beaumont and Fletcher, perpetually recurring as the
cause, and sine qua non of, — the incidents and emotions.
Let the first scene of this play have been lost, and let it
only be understood that a fond father had been duped by
hypocritical professions of love and duty on the part of two
daughters to disinherit the third, previously, and de-
servedly, more dear to him ; — and all the rest of the
tragedy would retain its interest undiminished, and be
perfectly intelligible. The accidental is nowhere the
groundwork of the passions, but that which is cathohc,
which in all ages has been, and ever will be, close and
native to the heart of man, — parental anguish from filial
ingratitude, the genuineness of worth, though confined in
bluntness, and the execrable vileness of a smooth iniquity.
Perhaps I ought to have added the Merchant of Venice ;
but here too the same remarks apply. It was an old tale ;
and substitute any other danger than that of the pound of
flesh (the circumstance in which the improbability lies),
yet all the situations and the emotions appertaining to
them remain equally excellent and appropriate. Where-
as take away from the Mad Lover of Beaumont and
Fletcher the fantastic hypothesis of his engagement to cut
out his own heart, and have it presented to his mistress,
and all the main scenes must go with it.
Kotzebue is the German Beaumont and Fletcher, with-
out their poetic powers, and without their vis comica.
But, like them, he always deduces his situations and
passions from marvellous accidents, and the trick of bring-
ing one part of our moral nature to counteract another ;
as our pity for misfortune and admiration of generosity
and courage to combat our condemnation of guilt, as in
adultery, robbery, and other heinous crimes ; — and, like
them too, he excels in his mode of telling a story clearly
and interestingly, in a series of dramatic dialogues. Only
the trick of making tragedy-heroes and heroines out of
shopkeepers and barmaids was too low for the age, and
too unpoetic for the genius, of Beaumont and Fletcher,
inferior in every respect as they are to their great pre-
decessor and contemporary. How inferior would they
have appeared, had not Shakspeare existed for them to
imitate ; — which in every play, more or less, they do, and
in their tragedies most glaringly : — and yet — (O shame !
Historical Plays 127
shame !) — they miss no opportunity of sneering at the
divine man, and sub-detracting from his merits !
To return to Lear, Having thus in the fewest words,
and in a natural reply to as natural a question, — which
yet answers the secondary purpose of attracting our atten-
tion to the difference or diversity between the characters
of Cornwall and Albany, — provided the premisses and
data, as it were, for our after insight into the mind and
mood of the person, whose character, passions, and suffer-
ings are the main subject-matter of the play ; — from Lear,
the persona patiens of his drama, Shakspeare passes without
delay to the second in importance, the chief agent and
prime mover, and introduces Edmund to our acquaintance,
preparing us with the same felicity of judgment, and in
the same easy and natural way, for his character in the
seemingly casual communication of its origin and occasion.
From the first drawing up of the curtain Edmund has
stood before us in the united strength and beauty of earliest
manhood. Our eyes have been questioning him. Gifted
as he is with high advantages of person, and further en-
dowed by nature with a powerful intellect and a strong
energetic will, even without any concurrence of circum-
stances and accident, pride will necessarily be the sin that
most easily besets him. But Edmund is also the known
and acknowledged son of the princely Gloster : he, there-
fore, has both the germ of pride, and the conditions best
fitted to evolve and ripen it into a predominant feeling.
Yet hitherto no reason appears why it should be other
than the not unusual pride of person, talent, and birth, —
a pride auxiliary, if not akin, to many virtues, and the
natural ally of honourable impulses. But alas ! in his
own presence his own father takes shame to himself for
the frank avowal that he is his father, — he has 'blushed
so often to acknowledge him that he is now brazed to
it ! ' Edmund hears the circumstances of his birth spoken
of with a most degrading and licentious levity, — his
mother described as a wanton by her own paramour, and
the remembrance of the animal sting, the low criminal
gratifications connected with her wantonness and pro-
stituted beauty, assigned as the reason, why 'the
whoreson must be acknowledged !' This, and the con-
sciousness of its notoriety ; the gnawing conviction that
every show of respect is an effort of courtesy, which recalls,
128 Notes on Lear
while it represses, a contrary feeling ; — this is the ever
trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the wounds of
pride, — the corrosive virus which inoculates pride with
a venom not its own, with envy, hatred, and a lust for that
power which in its blaze of radiance would hide the dark
spots on his disc, — with pangs of shame personally un-
deserved, and therefore felt as wrongs, and with a blind
ferment of vindictive working towards the occasions
and causes, especially towards a brother, whose stainless
birth and lawful honours were the constant remembrancers
of his own debasement, and were ever in the way to prevent
all chance of its being unknown, or overlooked and for-
gotten. Add to this, that with excellent judgment, and
provident for the claims of the moral sense, — for that
which, relatively to the drama, is called poetic justice, and
as the fittest means for reconciling the feelings of the
spectators to the horrors of Gloster's after sufferings, —
at least, of rendering them somewhat less unendurable ; —
(for I will not disguise my conviction, that in this one
point the tragic in this play has been urged beyond the
outermost mark and ne plus ultra of the dramatic) — Shak-
speare has precluded all excuse and palliation of the guilt
incurred by both the parents of the base-born Edmund, by
Gloster's confession that he was at the time a married man,
and already blest with a lawful heir of his fortunes. The
mournful alienation of brotherly love, occasioned by the
law of primogeniture in noble families, or rather by the
unnecessary distinctions engrafted thereon, and this in
children of the same stock, is still almost proverbial on
the continent, — especially, as I know from my own observa-
tion, in the south of Europe, — and appears to have been
scarcely less common in our own island before the Revolu-
tion of 1688, if we may judge from the characters and
sentiments so frequent in our elder comedies. There is
the younger brother, for instance, in Beaumont and
Fletcher's play of the Scornful Lady, on the one side, and
Oliver in Shakspeare's As You Like It, on the other.
Need it be said how heavy an aggravation, in such a case,
the stain of bastardy must have been, were it only that
the younger brother was liable to hear his own dishonour
and his mother's infamy related by his father with an
excusing shrug of the shoulders, and in a tone betwixt
waggery and shame !
Notes on Lear 129
By the circumstances here enumerated as so many pre-
disposing causes, Edmund's character might well be
deemed already sufficiently explained ; and our minds
prepared for it. But in this tragedy the story or fable
constrained Shakspeare to introduce wickedness in an
outrageous form in the persons of Regan and Goneril.
He had read nature too heedfully not to know, that courage,
intellect, and strength of character are the most impressive
forms of power, and that to power in itself, without re-
ference to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and
complacency appertains, whether it be displayed in the
conquests of a Buonaparte or Tamerlane, or in the foam and
the thunder of a cataract. But in the exhibition of such a
character it was of the highest importance to prevent the
guilt from passing into utter monstrosity, — which again
depends on the presence or absence of causes and tempta-
tions sufficient to account for the wickedness, without the
necessity of recurring to a thorough fiendishness of nature
for its origination. For such are the appointed relations of
intellectual power to truth, and of truth to goodness, that
it becomes both morally and poetically unsafe to present
what is admirable, — what our nature compels us to admire
— in the mind, and what is most detestable in the heart, as
co-existing in the same individual without any apparent
connection, or any modification of the one by the other.
That Shakspeare has in one instance, that of lago,
approached to this, and that he has done it successfully, is,
perhaps, the most astonishing proof of his genius, and
the opulence of its resources. But in the present tragedy,
in which he was compelled to present a Goneril and a
Regan, it was most carefully to be avoided ; — and there-
fore the only one conceivable addition to the inauspicious
influences on the pre-formation of Edmund's character is
given, in the information that all the kindly counteractions
to the mischievous feelings of shame, which might have
been derived from co-domestication with Edgar and their
common father, had been cut off by his absence from home,
and foreign education from boyhood to the present time,
and a prospect of its continuance, as if to preclude all risk
of his interference with the father's views for the elder and
legitimate son : —
He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.
E
130 Notes on Lear
Act i. sc. I.
Cor. Nothing, my lord.
Lear. Nothing ?
Cor. Nothing.
Lear. Nothing can come of nothing : speak again.
Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth : I love your majesty
According to my bond ; nor more, nor less.
There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy
of her sisters, and some Httle faulty admixture of pride and
sullenness in Cordelia's 'Nothing;' and her tone is well
contrived, indeed, to lessen the glaring absurdity of Lear's
conduct, but answers the yet more important purpose of
forcing away the attention from the nursery-tale, the
moment it has served its end, that of supplying the canvass
for the picture. This is also materially furthered by Kent's
opposition, which displays Lear's moral incapability of
resigning the sovereign power in the very act of disposing
of it. Kent is, perhaps, the nearest to perfect goodness
in all Shakspeare's characters, and yet the most in-
dividualized. There is an extraordinary charm in his
bluntness, which is that only of a nobleman arising from
a contempt of overstrained courtesy, and combined with
easy placability where goodness of heart is apparent.
His passionate affection for, and fidelity to, Lear act on
our feelings in Lear's own favour : virtue itself seems
to be in company with him.
lb. sc. 2. Edmund's speech : —
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, &c.
Warburton's note upon a quotation from Vanini.
Poor Vanini ! — Any one but Warburton would have
thought this precious passage more characteristic of Mr.
Shandy than of atheism. If the fact really were so,
{which it is not, but almost the contrary,) I do not see why
the most confirmed theist might not very naturally utter
the same wish. But it is proverbial that the youngest son
in a lai'ge family is commonly the man of the greatest
talents in it ; and as good an authority as Vanini has said
— incalescere in vetierem ardeniius, spei sobolis injuriosum
esse.
Notes on Lear 131
In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man
cannot reconcile himself to reason, how his conscience flies
off by way of appeal to nature, who is sure upon such
occasions never to find fault, and also how shame sharpens
a predisposition in the heart to evil. For it is a profound
moral, that shame will naturally generate guilt ; the
oppressed will be vindictive, like Shylock, and in the
anguish of undeserved ignominy the delusion secretly
springs up, of getting over the moral quality of an action
by fixing the mind on the mere physical act alone.
lb. Edmund's speech : —
This is the excellent foppery of the world ! that, when we are
sick in fortune, (often the surfeit of our own behaviour,) we make
guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars, &c.
Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations
and mouth-pieces of wisdom in the detection of super-
stitions. Both individuals and nations may be free from
such prejudices by being below them, as well as by rising
above them.
lb. sc. 3. The Steward should be placed in exact
antithesis to Kent, as the only character of utter irredeem-
able baseness in Shakspeare. Even in this the judgment
and invention of the poet are very observable ; — for what
else could the willing tool of a Goneril be ? Not a vice but
this of baseness was left open to him.
lb. sc. 4. In Lear old age is itself a character, — its
natural imperfections being increased by life-long habits
of receiving a prompt obedience. Any addition of in-
dividuality would have been unnecessary and painful ;
for the relations of others to him, of wondrous fidelity and
of frightful ingratitude, alone sufficiently distinguish him.
Thus Lear becomes the open and ample play-room of
nature's passions.
lb.
Knight. Since my young lady's going into France, Sir ; the
fool hath much pin'd away.
The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings
laugh, — no forced condescension of Shakspeare's genius to
the taste of his audience. Accordingly the poet prepares
for his introduction, which he never does with any of his
common clowns and fools, by bringing him into living con-
nection with the pathos of the play. He is as wonderful
132 Notes on Lear
a creation as Caliban ; — his wild babblings, and inspired
idiocy, articulate and gauge the horrors of the scene.
The monster Goneril prepares what is necessary, while the
character of Albany renders a still more maddening
grievance possible, namely, Regan and Cornwall in perfect
sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an image,
which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted ;
whenever these creatures are introduced, and they are
brought forward as little as possible, pure horror reigns
throughout. In this scene and in all the early speeches of
Lear, the one general sentiment of filial ingratitude pre-
vails as the main spring of the feelings ; — in this early
stage the outward object causing the pressure on the mind,
which is not yet sufficiently familiarized with the anguish
£or the imagination to work upon it.
lb.
Gon. Do you mark that, my lord ?
^. Alb. I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
To the great love I bear you.
Gon. Pray you content, &c.
Observe the baffled endeavour of Goneril to act on the
fears of Albany, and yet his passiveness, his inertia ; he is
not convinced, and yet he is afraid of looking into the thing.
Such characters always yield to those who will take the
trouble of governing them, or for them. Perhaps, the
influence of a princess, whose choice of him had royalized
his state, may be some little excuse for Albany's weakness,
lb. sc. 5.
Lear. O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven !
Keep me in temper ! I would not be mad ! —
The mind's own anticipation of madness ! The deepest
tragic notes are often struck by a half sense of an impend-
ing blow. The Fool's conclusion of this act by a grotesque
prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling that
has begun and is to be continued.
Act ii. sc. I. Edmund's speech : —
He replied,
Thou unpossessing bastard ! &c.
Thus the secret poison in Edmund's own heart steals
forth ; and then observe poor Gloster's —
Loyal and natural boy !
as if praising the crime of Edmund's birth !
Notes on Lear 133
lb. Compare Regan's —
What, did my father's godson seek your life ?
He whom my father named ?
with the unfeminine violence of her —
All vengeance comes too short, &c.
and yet no reference to the guilt, but only to the accident,
which she uses as an occasion for sneering at her father.
Regan is not, in fact, a greater monster than Goneril, but
she has the power of casting more venom,
lb. sc. 2. Cornwall's speech : —
This is some fellow,
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, &c.
In thus placing these profound general truths in the
mouths of such men as Cornwall, Edmund, lago, &c.
Shakspeare at once gives them utterance, and yet shows
how indefinite their application is.
lb. sc. 3. Edgar's assumed madness serves the great
purpose of taking off part of the shock which would other-
wise be caused by the true madness of Lear, and further
displays the profound difference between the two. In
every attempt at representing madness throughout the
whole range of dramatic literature, with the single excep-
tion of Lear, it is mere lightheadedness, as especially in
Otway. In Edgar's ravings Shakspeare all the while lets
you see a fixed purpose, a practical end in view ; — in Lear's,
there is only the brooding of the one anguish, an eddy
without progression.
lb. sc. 4. Lear's speech : —
The king would speak with Cornwall ; the dear father
Would with his daughter speak, &c.
« * « *
No, but not yet : may be he is not well, &c.
The strong interest now felt by Lear to try to find
excuses for his daughter is most pathetic,
lb. Lear's speech : —
Beloved Regan.
Thy sister's naught ; — O Regan, she hath tied
Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here.
I can scarce speak to thee ; — thou'lt not beUeve
With how deprav'd a quality — O Regan !
134 Notes on Lear
Reg. I pray you. Sir, take patience ; I have hope.
You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.
Lear. Say, how is that ?
Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence
or palliation of a cruelty passionately complained of, or so
expressive of thorough hard-heartedness. And feel the
excessive horror of Regan's *0, Sir, you are old!' — and
then her drawing from that universal object of reverence
and indulgence the very reason for her frightful con-
clusion—
Say, you have wrong'd her I
All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to
know them otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and
aggravations of his daughter's ingratitude.
lb. Lear's speech : —
O, reason not the need : our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous, &c.
Observe that the tranquillity which follows the first
stunning of the blow permits Lear to reason.
Act iii. sc. 4. O, what a world's convention of agonies
is here ! All external nature in a storm, all moral nature
convulsed, — the real madness of Lear, the feigned madness
of Edgar, the babbling of the Fool, the desperate fidelity of
Kent — surely such a scene was never conceived before or
since ! Take it but cLS a picture for the eye only, it is more
terrific than any which a Michel Angelo, inspired by a
Dante, could have conceived, and which none but a Michel
Angelo could have executed. Or let it have been uttered
to the blind, the bowlings of nature would seem converted
into the voice of conscious humanity. This scene ends
with the first symptoms of positive derangement ; and
the intervention of the fifth scene is particularly judicious,
— the interruption allowing an interval for Lear to appear
in full madness in the sixth scene.
lb. sc. 7. Gloster's blinding : —
What can I say of this scene ? — There is my reluctance to
think Shakspeare wrong, and yet —
Act iv. sc. 6. Lear's speech : —
Ha I Goneril 1 — with a white beard ! — They flattered me like a
dog ; and told me, I had white hairs in my beard, ere the black
Notes on Hamlet 135
ones were there. To say Ay and No to every thing that I said !
— Ay and No too was no good divinity. When the rain came to
wet me once, &c.
The thunder recurs, but still at a greater distance from
our feelings.
lb. sc. 7. Lear's speech : —
Where have I been ? Where am I ? — Fair daylight ? —
I am mightily abused. — I should even die with pity
To see another thus, &c.
How beautifully the affecting return of Lear to reason,
and the mild pathos of these speeches prepare the mind for
the last sad, yet sweet, consolation of the aged sufferer's
death I
HAMLET.
Hamlet was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the
character, in the intuition and exposition of which I first
made my turn for philosophical criticism, and especially
for insight into the genius of Shakspeare, noticed. This
happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George
Beaumont will bear witness ; and subsequently, long
before Schlegel had delivered at Vienna the lectures on
Shakspeare, which he afterwards published, I had given on
the same subject eighteen lectures substantially the same,
proceeding from the very same point of view, and deducing
the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now
agree, with him. I gave these lectures at the Royal
Institution, before six or seven hundred auditors of rank
and eminence, in the spring of the same year, in which Sir
Humphrey Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great re-
volutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the
coincidence of Schlegel with my lectures was so extra-
ordinary, that all who at a later period heard the same
words, taken by me from my notes of the lectures at the
Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from
Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an
inverse ratio to my zealous kindness towards him, as to be
defended by his warmest admirer, Charles Lamb — (who,
God bless him ! besides his characteristic obstinacy of
adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at all
136 Notes on Hamlet
down in the world, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's con-
versation)— only as 'frantic' ; — Mr. Hazlitt, I say, himself
repHed to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in
these words ; — " That is a lie ; for I myself heard the very
same character of Hamlet from Coleridge before he went
to Germany, and when he had neither read nor could read a
page of German ! " Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at
my cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of
the year 1798, in the September of which year I first was
out of sight of the shores of Great Britain. Recorded by
me, S. T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819.
The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character
of Hamlet have long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of
critics ; and, as we are always loth to suppose that "the
cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery
has been too commonly explained by the very easy pro-
cess of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by
resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the
capricious and irregular genius of Shakspeare. The shallow
and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent de-
cisions I would fain do my best to expose. I beUeve the
character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspeare' s deep
and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that
this character must have some connection with the common
fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the
fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in
which the literature of England has been fostered. In order
to understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on
the constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished
from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails
over sense : but in the healthy processes of the mind, a
balance is constantly maintained between the impressions
from outward objects and the inward operations of the
intellect ; — for if there be an overbalance in the contem-
plative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of
mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.
Now one of Shakspeare' s modes of creating characters is,
to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid
excess, and then to place himself, Shakspeare, thus muti-
lated or diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet
he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity
of a due balance between our attention to the objects of
our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our
Notes on Hamlet 137
minds, — an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary
worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed : his thoughts,
and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his
actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly
passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire,
as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own.
Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual
activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action,
consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accom-
panying qualities. This character Shakspeare places
in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on the
spur of the moment : — Hamlet is brave and careless of
death ; but he vacillates from sensibihty, and procrasti-
nates from thought, and loses the power of action in the
energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a
direct contrast to that of Macbeth ; the one proceeds with
the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breath-
less rapidity.
The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is
beautifully illustrated in the everlasting broodings and
superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated
from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the
world within, and abstracted from the world without, —
giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all
common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to be
indefinite ; — definiteness belongs to external imagery alone.
Hence it is that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the
sight of an outward object, but from the beholder's re-
flection upon it ; — not from the sensuous impression,
but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a
celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to
disappointment : it is only subsequently that the image
comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train
of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this ;
his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon ex-
ternal things as hieroglyphics. His solfloquy —
O ! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c.
springs from that craving after the indefinite — for that
which is not — which most easily besets men of genius ;
and the self-delusion common to this temper of mind is
finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives
of himself : —
138 Notes on Hamlet
— It cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter.
He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them,
delays action till action is of no use, and dies the victim
of mere circumstance and accident.
There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspeare's
plays. In the Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream,
As You Like It, and Winter's Tale, the total effect is
produced by a co-ordination of the characters as in a
\\Teath of flowers. But in Coriolanus, Lear, Romeo and
Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, &c. the effect arises from the
subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person,
or the principal object. Cymbeline is the only exception ;
and even that has its advantages in preparing the audience
for the chaos of time, place, and costume, by throwing the
date back into a fabulous king's reign.
But as of more importance, so more striking, is the
judgment displayed by our truly dramatic poet, as well
as poet of the drama, in the management of his first scenes.
With the single exception of Cymbeline, they either place
before us at one glance both the past and the future in
some effect, which implies the continuance and fuU agency
of its cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants
of the two houses in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet;
or in the degrading passion for shews and public spectacles,
and the overwhelming attachment for the newest success-
ful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a
populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in
Julius Caesar ; — or they at once commence the action so
as to excite a curiosity for the explanation in the following
scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the boat-
swain in the Tempest, instead of anticipating our curiosity,
as in most other first scenes, and in too many other first
acts ; — or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the
characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give
a naturalness to the language and rhythm of the principal
personages, either as that of Prospero and Miranda by the
appropriate lowness of the style, — or as in King John, by
the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues
or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong
to the rank and quality of the speakers, and not to the
poet ; — or they strike at once the key-note, and give the
Notes on Hamlet 139
predominant spirit of the play, as in the Twelfth Night and
in Macbeth ; — or finally, the first scene comprises all these
advantages at once, as in Hamlet.
Compare the easy language of common life, in which
this drama commences, with the direful music and wild
wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of
Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar ; — there is no poetic
description of night, no elaborate information conveyed
by one speaker to another of what both had immediately
before their senses — (such as the first distich in Addison's
Cato, which is a translation into poetry of 'Past four
o'clock and a dark morning !') ; — and yet nothing border-
ing on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the
intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of
sensation among men who feared no charge of effeminacy
for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear.
Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that
first interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold,
the broken expressions of compelled attention to bodily
feehngs still under control — all excellently accord with,
and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy ; —
but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of which is as
eminently ad et apud intra, as that of Macbeth is directly
ad extra.
In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions,
as in that of Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of
Benvenuto Cellini recorded by himself, and the vision of
Galileo communicated by him to his favourite pupil
Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling
damp from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has
been with all of them as with Francisco on his guard, —
alone, in the depth and silence of the night ; — "twas
bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and not a mouse
stirring.' The attention to minute sounds, — naturally
associated with the recollection of minute objects, and
the more familiar and trifling, the more impressive from
the unusualness of their producing any impression at all
— gives a philosophic pertinency to this last image ; but
it has hkewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its
commonness in ordinary conversation tends to produce
the sense of reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet
approximates the reader or spectator to that state in
which the highest poetry will appear, and in its component
140 Notes on Hamlet
parts, though not in the whole composition, really is, the
language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that
I should be thinking it ; — the voice only is the poet's, —
the words are my own. That Shakspeare meant to put
an effect in the actor's power in the very first words —
" Who's there ? " — is evident fromt he impatience ex-
pressed by the startled Francisco in the words that follow
— " Nay, answer me : stand and unfold yourself." A brave
man is never so peremptory, as when he fears that he is
afraid. Observe the gradual transition from the silence
and the still recent habit of listening in Francisco's — " I
think I hear them " — to the more cheerful call out, which
a good actor would observe, in the — " Stand ho ! Who is
there ? " Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and the
repetition of his name and in his own presence indicate a
respect or an eagerness that implies him as one of the
persons who are in the foreground ; and the scepticism
attributed to him, —
Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy ;
And will not let belief take hold of him —
prepares us for Hamlet's after eoilogy on him as one whose
blood and judgment were happily commingled. The
actor should also be careful to distinguish the expectation
and gladness of Bernardo's 'Welcome, Horatio !' from
the mere courtesy of his 'Welcome, good Marcellus !*
Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first
opening out of the occasion of all this anxiety. The
preparation informative of the audience is just as much as
was precisely necessary, and no more ; — it begins with the
uncertainty appertaining to a question : —
Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night ? —
Even the word 'again' has its credihilizing effect. Then
Horatio, the representative of the ignorance of the
audience, not himself, but by Marcellus to Bernardo,
anticipates the common solution — "tis but our fantasy !'
upon which Marcellus rises into
This dreaded sight, twice seen of us —
which immediately afterwards becomes 'this apparition,*
and that, too, an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to !
Then comes the confirmation of Horatio's disbelief ; —
Tush ! tush ! 'twill not appear ! —
Notes on Hamlet 141
and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again
restored in the shivering feeUng of Horatio sitting down,
at such a time, and with the two eye-witnesses, to hear a
story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost which had
appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the
deep feeUng which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of
what he is about to relate, he makes an effort to master his
own imaginative terrors by an elevation of style, — itself
a continuation of the effort, — and by turning off from the
apparition, as from something which would force him too
deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities
of nature, which had accompanied it : —
Ber. Last night of all.
When yon same star, that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself.
The bell then beating one —
This passage seems to contradict the critical law that
what is told, makes a faint impression compared with
what is beholden ; for it does indeed convey to the mind
more than the eye can see ; whilst the interruption of the
narrative at the very moment when we are most intensely
listening for the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted
from the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet
almost dreaded, tale — this gives all the suddenness and
surprise of the original appearance ; —
Mar. Peace, break thee oflE ; look, where it comes again ! —
Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons
present, who, as having seen the Ghost before, are naturally
eager in confirming their former opinions, — whilst the
sceptic is silent, and after having been twice addressed by
his friends, answers with two hasty syllables — 'Most like,'
— and a confession of horror :
— It harrows me with fear and wonder.
O heaven ! words are wasted on those who feel, and to
those who do not feel the exquisite judgment of Shak-
speare in this scene, what can be said ? — Hume himself
could not but have had faith in this Ghost dramatically,
let his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Sampson
against other ghosts less powerfully raised.
142 Notes on Hamlet
Act i. sc. I.
Mar, Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch, &c.
How delightfully natural is the transition to the retro-
spective narrative ! And observe, upon the Ghost's re-
appearance, how much Horatio's courage is increased by
having translated the late individual spectator into general
thought and past experience, — and the sympathy of
Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in
daring to strike at the Ghost ; whilst in a moment, upon
its vanishing the former solemn awe-stricken feeling
returns upon them : —
We do it wrong, being so majestical.
To offer it the show of violence. —
lb. Horatio's speech : —
I have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn.
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, &c.
No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction
than Shakspeare in providing the grounds and sources of
its propriety. But how to elevate a thing almost mean
by its familiarity, young poets may learn in this treatment
of the cock-crow.
lb. Horatio's speech : —
And, by my advice.
Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life.
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of
introducing the main character, 'young Hamlet,' upon
whom is transferred all the interest excited for the acts
and concerns of the king his father.
lb. sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change
of scene to the royal court, in order that Hamlet may not
have to take up the leavings of exhaustion. In the king's
speech, observe the set and pedantically antithetic form
of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels
of conscience, — the strain of undignified rhetoric, — and
yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a certain
appropriate majesty. Indeed was he not a royal brother ? —
Notes on Hamlet 143
lb. King's speech : —
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you ? &c.
Thus with great art Shakspeare introduces a most impor-
tant, but still subordinate character first, Laertes, who is
yet thus graciously treated in consequence of the assistance
given to the election of the late king's brother instead of
his son by Polonius.
lb.
Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you ?
Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun.
Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the
complete absence of which throughout characterizes
Macbeth. This playing on words may be attributed to
many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity
of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspeare generally ;
— or to an imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were
said — Ts not this better than groaning ?' — or to a con-
temptuous exultation in minds vulgarized and overset by
their success, as in the poetic instance of Milton's Devils
in the battle ; — or it is the language of resentment, as is
familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the
lower orders, where there is invariably a profusion of
punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a
considerable degree sprung up ; — or it is the language of
suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered
personal dislike. The first and last of these combine in
Hamlet's case ; and I have little doubt that Farmer is
right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the
expression 'too much i' the sun,' or son.
lb.
Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.
Here observe Hamlet's deUcacy to his mother, and how
the suppression prepares him for the overflow in the next
speech, in which his character is more developed by bring-
ing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays
his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled
with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half
embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and
have an outness, a reality sui generis, and yet retain their
correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and
movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the
144 Notes on Hamlet
long speech of the king which follows, and his respectful,
but general, answer to his mother.
lb. Hamlet's first soliloquy : —
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! &c.
This tcBdium vUcb is a common oppression on minds cast
in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportionate
mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodily
feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and
internal action, pleasure is always the result ; but where
the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of the
ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving.
In such cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite
alone. In this mood of his mind the relation of the
appearance of his father's spirit in arms is made all at once
to Hamlet : — it is — Horatio's speech, in particular — a
perfect model of the true style of dramatic narrative ; —
the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language,
equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.
lb. sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shak-
speare's lyric movements in the play, and the skiU with
which it is interwoven with the dramatic parts is peculiarly
an excellence of our poet. You experience the sensation
of a pause without the sense of a stop. You will observe
in OpheUa's short and general answer to the long speech
of Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which
cannot think such a code of cautions and prudences
necessary to its own preservation.
lb. Speech of Polonius : — (in Stockdale's edition.)
Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,)
Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool.
I suspect this 'wronging' is here used much in the same
sense as 'wringing' or 'wrenching' ; and that the paren-
thesis should be extended to 'thus.' ^
lb. Speech of Polonius : —
How prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows : — these blazes, daughter, &c.
A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text.
Either insert 'Go to' after 'vows ' ; —
1 It is so pointed in the modern editions. — Ed.
Notes on Hamlet 145
Lends the tongue vows : Go to, these blazes, daughter —
or read
Lends the tongue vows : — These blazes, daughter, mark you —
Shakspeare never introduces a catalectic line without
intending an equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses,
or the dwelling emphasis, or the diffused retardation. I
do not, however, deny that a good actor might by employ-
ing the last mentioned means, namely, the retardation, or
solemn knowing drawl, supply the missing spondee with
good effect. But I do not believe that in this or any other
of the foregoing speeches of Polonius, Shakspeare meant
to bring out the senility or weakness of that personage's
mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties
of life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the applica-
tion of the maxims collected by the experience of a long
life, requires no fineness of tact, as in the admonitions to
his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made respect-
able. But if an actor were even capable of catching these
shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be
malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that
Polonius is, and is meant to be, contemptible, because in
inwardness and uncontrollable activity of movement,
Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of Polonius,
and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes
the man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the
succession to the crown.
lb. sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which
this scene opens is a proof of Shakspeare's minute know-
ledge of human nature. It is a well established fact, that
on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of moment,
men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of
their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and
familiar circumstances : thus this dialogue on the platform
begins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries,
obliquely connected, indeed, with the expected hour of
the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming vacuity of
topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The
same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried
on in Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish
custom of wassailing : he runs off from the particular to the
universal, and, in his repugnance to personal and individual
concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself in generaliza-
146 Notes on Hamlet
tions, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings
of the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, an-
other purpose is answered ; — for by thus entangling the
attention of the audience in the nice distinctions and
parenthetical sentences of this speech of Hamlet's, Shak-
speare takes them completely by surprise on the appearance
of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the sudden-
ness of its visionary character. Indeed, no modem writer
would have dared, like Shakspeare, to have preceded this
last visitation by two distinct appearances, — or could have
contrived that the third should rise upon the former two
in impressiveness and solemnity of interest.
But in addition to all the other excellences of Hamlet's
speech concerning the wassel-music — so finely revealing
the predominant ideahsm, the ratiocinative meditativeness,
of his character — it has the advantage of giving nature
and probability to the impassioned continuity of the speech
instantly directed to the Ghost. The momentum had been
given to his mental activity ; the full current of the
thoughts and words had set in, and the very forgetfulness,
in the fervour of his argumentation, of the purpose for
which he was there, aided in preventing the appearance
from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it acted as a
new impulse, — a sudden stroke which increased the velocity
of the body already in motion, whilst it altered the direc-
tion. The co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo
is most judiciously contrived ; for it renders the courage
of Hamlet and his impetuous eloquence perfectly intel-
ligible. The knowledge, — the unthought of consciousness,
— the sensation, — of human auditors, — of flesh and blood
sympathists — acts as a support and a stimulation a tergo,
while the front of the mind, the whole consciousness of
the speaker, is filled, yea, absorbed, by the apparition.
Add too, that the apparition itself has by its previous
appearances been brought nearer to a thing of this world.
This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains
all its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly
wonderful.
lb. sc. 5. Hamlet's speech : —
O all 3'^ou host of heaven ! O earth ! What else ?
And shall I couple hell ? —
1 remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the
Notes on Hamlet 147
first speech of Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the
exit of Vulcan and the two Afrites. But Shakspeare alone
could have produced the vow of Hamlet to make his
memory a blank of all maxims and generalized truths,
that 'observation had copied there,* — followed immediately
by the speaker noting down the generalized fact,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain I
lb.
Mar. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord I
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come bird, come, &c.
This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the
Ghost has been charged with an improbable eccentricity.
But the truth is, that after the mind has been stretched
beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into
exhaustion and inanity, or seek rehef by change. It is
thus well known, that persons conversant in deeds of
cruelty contrive to escape from conscience by connecting
something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing
grotesque terms and a certain technical phraseology to
disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical
as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind
always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise
from the perception of something out of the common order
of things — something, in fact, out of its place ; and if from
this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness wiU alone
remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The
close aUiance of these opposites — they are not contraries —
appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally
the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy :
as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a
laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. These complex
causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet the dis-
position to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelm-
ing and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,
— a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of
delirium. For you may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet's
wildness is but half false ; he plays that subtle trick of
pretending to act only when he is very near really being
what he acts.
The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly
defensible : — but I would call your attention to the char-
acteristic difference between this Ghost, as a superstition
14B Notes on Hamlet
connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed
religion, — and Shakspeare's consequent reverence in his
treatment of it, — and the foul earthly witcheries and wild
language in Macbeth.
Act ii. sc. I. Polonius and Reynaldo.
In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine
address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable
than the light motions, steps, and gestures of youth and
health. But this is almost everything : — no wonder, there-
fore if that which can be put down by rule in the memory
should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning, —
slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation.
So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the
skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the
trail of policy at a dead scent, supphed by the weak fever-
smell in his own nostrils.
lb. sc. 2. Speech of Polonius : —
My liege, and madam, to expostulate, &c.
Warburton's note.
Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into
the sermons of Dr. Donne (the wittiest man of that age) and we
shall find them full of this vein.
I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's
sermons, and find none of these jingles. The great
art of an orator — to make whatever he talks of appear
of importance — this, indeed, Donne has effected with
consunamate skill.
lb.
Ham. Excellent well ;
You are a fishmonger.
That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is
Hamlet's own meaning.
lb.
Ham. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog,
Being a god, kissing carrion —
These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some
thought in Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter
with such a tedious old fool, her father, as he, Hamlet,
represents Polonius to himself : — 'Why, fool as he is, he is
some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase ; and if
the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise Ufe out
Notes on Hamlet 149
of a dead dog, — why may not good fortune, that favours
fools, have raised a lovely girl out of this dead-alive old
fool ?' Warburton is often led astray, in his interpreta-
tions, by his attention to general positions without the due
Shakspearian reference to what is probably passing in the
mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his
particular character and present mood. The subsequent
passage, —
O Jephtha, judge of Israel ! what a treasure hadst thou !
is confirmatory of my view of these lines,
lb.
Ham. You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will more
willingly part withal ; except my life, except my life, except my
life.
This repetition strikes me as most admirable,
lb.
Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies ; and our monarchs, and
out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows.
I do not understand this ; and Shakspeare seems to
have intended the meaning not to be more than snatched
at : — 'By my fay, I cannot reason !'
The rugged Pyrrhus — he whose sable arms, &c.
This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic,
giving such a reality to the impassioned dramatic diction
of Shakspeare' s own dialogue, and authorized too, by the
actual style of the tragedies before his time (Porrex and
Ferrex, Titus Andronicus, &c.) — is well worthy of notice.
The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below
criticism : the lines, as epic narrative, are superb.
In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the
diction, this description is highly poetical : in truth, taken
by itself, that is its fault that it is too poetical ! — the
language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of
the drama. But if Shakspeare had made the diction truly
dramatic, where would have been the contrast between
Hamlet and the play in Hamlet ?
lb.
had seen the mobled queen, &c.
A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning
150 Notes on Hamlet
cap, which conceals the whole head of hair, and passes
under the chin. It is nearly the same as the night-cap,
that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to answer the purpose
(*I am not drest for company'), and yet reconciling it with
neatness and perfect purity,
lb. Hamlet's sohloquy :
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! &c.
This is Shakspeare's own attestation to the truth of the
idea of Hamlet which I have before put forth,
lb.
The spirit that I have seen,
May be a devil : and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and, perhaps
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits)
Abuses me to damn me.
See Sir Thomas Brown :
I believe that those apparitions and ghosts of departed
persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks
of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and
vUlany, instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed
spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the
affairs of the world. Relig. Med. Pt. I. Sect. 37.
Act iii. sc. I. Hamlet's soliloquy :
To be, or not to be, that is the question, &c.
This speech is of absolutely universal interest, — and yet
to which of all Shakspeare's characters could it have been
appropriately given but Hamlet ? For Jaques it would
have been too deep, and for lago too habitual a communion
with the heart ; which in every man belongs, or ought to
belong, to all mankind.
lb.
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns. —
Theobald's note in defence of the supposed contradiction
of this in the apparition of the Ghost.
O miserable defender ! If it be necessary to remove
the apparent contradiction, — if it be not rather a great
beauty, — surely, it were easy to say, that no traveller
returns to this world, as to his home, or abiding-place.
Notes on Hamlet 151
lb.
Ham. Ha, ha ! axe you honest ?
Oph. My lord ?
Ham. Are you fair ?
Here it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives,
from the strange and forced manner of Opheha, that the
sweet girl was not acting a part of her own, but was a
decoy; and his after speeches are not so much directed
to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in
a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain
harshness in him ; — and yet a wild up-working of love,
sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain
of irony, is perceptible throughout, *I did love you once :'
— 'I lov'd you not :' — and particularly in his enumeration
of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that
the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character.
Note Shakspeare's charm of composing the female char-
acter by the absence of characters, that is, marks and
out-juttings.
lb. Hamlet's speech : —
I say, we will have no more marriages : those that are married
already, all but one, shall live : the rest shall keep as they are.
Observe this dallying with the inward purpose, char-
acteristic of one who had not brought his mind to the
steady acting point. He would fain sting the uncle's mind;
— but to stab his body ! — The soliloquy of Ophelia, which
follows, is the perfection of love — so exquisitely unselfish !
lb. sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players
is one of the happiest instances of Shakspeare's power of
diversifying the scene while he is carrying on the plot.
lb.
Ham. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say ? {To
Polonius.)
To have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience
in any direct form, would have made a breach in the unity
of the interest ;— but yet to the thoughtful reader it is
suggested by his spite to poor Polonius, whom he cannot
let rest.
lb. The style of the interlude here is distinguished from
the real dialogue by rhyme, as in the first interview with
the players by epic verse.
152 Notes on Hamlet
lb.
Ros. My lord, you once did love me.
Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and stealers,
I never heard an actor give this word *so' its proper
emphasis. Shakspeare's meaning is — 'lov'd you ? Hum !
— so I do still, &c.' There has been no change in my
opinion :--I think as ill of you as I did. Else Hamlet
tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last
speech to Guildenstern — 'Why, look you now,' &c. —
proves.
lb. Hamlet's soliloquy : —
Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
The utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition,
a mood, to do something : — but what to do, is still left
undecided, while every word he utters tends to betray
his disguise. Yet observe how perfectly equal to any
call of the moment is Hamlet, let it only not be for the
future.
lb. sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer
obtrusion of himself into this business, while it is appro-
priate to his character, still itching after former importance,
removes all likelihood that Hamlet should suspect his
presence, and prevents us from making his death injure
Hamlet in our opinion.
lb. The king's speech : —
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven, &c.
This speech well marks the difference between crime
and guilt of habit. The conscience here is still admitted
to audience. Nay, even as an audible soliloquy, it is far
less improbable than is supposed by such as have watched
men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the
final — 'all may be well !' is remarkable ; — the degree of
merit attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own
struggle, though baffled, and to the indefinite half-promise,
half-command, to persevere in religious duties. The
solution is in the divine medium of the Christian doctrine
of expiation : — not what you have done, but what you are,
must determine.
Notes on Hamlet 153
lb. Hamlet's speech : —
Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying :
And now I'll do it : — And so he goes to heaven :
And so am I revenged ? That would be scann'd, &c.
Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and
procrastination for impetuous, horror-striking, fiendish-
ness ! — Of such importance is it to understand the
germ of a character. But the interval taken by Hamlet's
speech is truly awful ! And then —
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below :
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go, —
0 what a lesson concerning the essential difference
between wishing and willing, and the folly of all motive-
mongering, while the individual self remains !
lb. sc. 4.
Ham. A bloody deed ; — almost as bad, good mother.
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen. As kill a king ?
1 confess that Shakspeare has left the character of the
Queen in an unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she
not, conscious of the fratricide ?
Act iv. sc. 2.
Ros. Take you me for a spunge, my lord ?
Ham. Ay, Sir ; that soaks up the King's countenance, his
rewards, his authorities, &c.
Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utter-
ance of all the thoughts that had passed through his mind
before ; — in fact, in telling home-truths.
Act iv. sc. 5. Opheha's singing. O, note the conjunc-
tion here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted
in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, and her filial love, with
the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagina-
tion of the cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not
too delicately avowed, by her father and brother, concern-
ing the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought,
affliction, passion, murder itself — she turns to favour and
prettiness. This play of association is instanced in the
close : —
My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good
counsel.
154 Notes on Hamlet
lb. Gentleman's speech : —
And as the world were now but to begin
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word —
They cry, &c.
Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when 1
seem to see an error of judgment in Shakspeare, yet I can-
not reconcile the cool, and, as Warburton calls it, 'rational
and consequential,' reflection in these lines with the anony-
mousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or Messenger,
as he is called in other editions.
lb. King's speech : —
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
Proof, as indeed aU else is, that Shakspeare never in-
tended us to see the King with Hamlet's eyes ; though,
I suspect, the managers have long done so.
lb. Speech of Laertes : —
To hell, allegiance ! vows, to the blackest devil 1
Laertes is a good character, but, &c. Warburton.
Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness ! Please to
refer to the seventh scene of this act ; —
I will do it ;
And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword, &c.
uttered by Laertes after the King's description of
Hamlet ; —
He being remiss.
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foOs.
Yet I acknowledge that Shakspeare evidently wishes, as
much as possible, to spare the character of Laertes, — to
break the extreme turpitude of his consent to become an
agent and accomplice of the King's treachery ; — and to
this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene
to afford a probable stimulus of passion in her brother.
lb. sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This is
almost the only play of Shakspeare, in which mere accidents,
independent of all will, form an essential part of the plot ;
— but here how judiciously in keeping with the character
Notes on Hamlet 155
of the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last determined by
accident or by a fit of passion !
lb. sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's
vanity by praising the reporter, and then gratifies it by the
report itself, and finally points it by —
Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy I —
lb. King's speech :
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much.
Theobald's note from Warburton, who conjectures
'plethory.'
I rather think that Shakspeare meant 'pleurisy,' but
involved in it the thought of plethora, as supposing pleurisy
to arise from too much blood ; otherwise I cannot explain
the following line —
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
In a stitch in the side every one must have heaved a sigh
that 'hurt by easing.'
Since writing the above I feel confirmed that 'pleurisy'
is the right word ; for I find that in the old medical
dictionaries the pleurisy is often called the 'plethory.'
Queen. Your sister's drown'd, Laertes.
Laer. Drown'd ! O, where ?
That Laertes might be excused in some degree for not
cooling, the Act concludes with the affecting death of
Ophelia, — who in the beginning lay like a little projection
of land into a lake or stream, covered with spray-flowers,
quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is under-
mined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a
brief vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy !
Act V. sc. I. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns
and Hamlet, as two extremes ! You see in the former the
mockery of logic, and a traditional wit valued, Hke truth,
for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a tune, for use.
lb. sc. I and 2. Shakspeare seems to mean aU Hamlet's
character to be brought together before his final dis-
appearance from the scene ; — his meditative excess in the
156
Notes on Macbeth
grave-digging, his yielding to passion with Laertes, his
love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize
on all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine
gentlemanly manners with Osrick, and his and Shak-
speare's own fondness for presentiment :
But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart :
but it is no matter.
NOTES ON MACBETH.
Macbeth stands in contrast throughout with Hamlet ;
in the manner of opening more especially. In the latter,
there is a gradual ascent from the simplest forms of con-
versation to the language of impassioned intellect, — yet
the intellect still remaining the seat of passion : in the
former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination
and the emotions connected therewith. Hence the move-
ment throughout is the most rapid of all Shakspeare's
plays ; and hence also, with the exception of the disgusting
passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3), which I dare pledge
myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors,
there is not, to the best of my remembrance, a single pun
or play on words in the whole drama. I have previously
given an answer to the thousand times repeated charge
against Shakspeare upon the subject of his punning, and
I here merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns
in Macbeth, as justifying a candid doubt at least, whether
even in these figures of speech and fanciful modifications
of language, Shakspeare may not have followed rules and
principles that merit and would stand the test of philo-
sophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire
absence of comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic
contemplation in Macbeth, — the play being wholly and
purely tragic. For the same cause, there are no reasonings
of equivocal morality, which would have required a more
leisurely state and a consequently greater activity of
mind ; — no sophistry of self-delusion, — except only that
previously to the dreadful act, Macbeth mistranslates the
recoilings and ominous whispers of conscience into pru-
dential and selfish reasonings, and, after the deed done,
the terrors of remorse into fear from external dangers, —
Notes on Macbeth 157
like delirious men who run away from the phantoms of
their own brains, or, raised by terror to rage, stab the real
object that is within their reach : — whilst Lady Macbeth
merely endeavours to reconcile his and her own sinkings
of heart by anticipations of the worst, and an affected
bravado in confronting them. In all the rest, Macbeth's
language is the grave utterance of the very heart, con-
science-sick, even to the last faintings of moral death.
It is the same in all the other characters. The variety
arises from rage, caused ever and anon by disruption of
anxious thought, and the quick transition of fear into it.
In Hamlet and Macbeth the scene opens with super-
stition ; but, in each it is not merely different, but opposite.
In the first it is connected with the best and holiest feel-
ings ; in the second with the shadowy, turbulent, and
ansanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the
purpose the same ; in the one the object is to excite,
whilst in the other it is to mark a mind already excited.
Superstition, of one sort or another, is natural to
victorious generals ; the instances are too notorious to
need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare,
and such vast events are connected with the acts of a single
individual, — the representative, in truth, of the efforts of
myriads, and yet to the public and, doubtless, to his own
feelings, the aggregate of all, — that the proper tempera-
ment for generating or receiving superstitious impres-
sions is naturally produced. Hope, the master element of
a commanding genius, meeting with an active and combin-
ing intellect, and an imagination of just that degree of vivid-
ness which disquiets and impels the soul to try to realize
its images, greatly increases the creative power of the
mind ; and hence the images become a satisfying world of
themselves, as is the case in every poet and original
philosopher : — but hope fully gratified, and yet, the ele-
mentary basis of the passion remaining, becomes fear ;
and, indeed, the general, who must often feel, even though
he may hide it from his own consciousness, how large a
share chance had in his successes, may very naturally be
irresolute in a new scene, where he knows that all will
depend on his own act and election.
The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakspeare's,
as his Ariel and Caliban, — fates, furies, and materializing
witches being the elements. They are wholly different
158 Notes on Macbeth
from any representation of witches in the contemporary
writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance
to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on
the audience. Their character consists in the imagina-
tive disconnected from the good ; they are the shadowy
obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, the
lawless of human nature, — elemental avengers without
sex or kin :
Fair is foul, and foul is fair ;
Hover thro' the fog and filtliy air.
How much it were to be wished in playing Macbeth, that
an attempt should be made to introduce the flexile char-
acter-mask of the ancient pantomime ; — that Flaxman
would contribute his genius to the embodying and making
sensuously perceptible that of Shakspeare !
The style and rhythm of the Captain's speeches in the
second scene should be illustrated by reference to the
interlude in Hamlet, in which the epic is substituted for
the tragic, in order to make the latter be felt as the real-hfe
diction. In Macbeth, the poet's object was to raise the
mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience
might be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt
in the early part of the play. The true reason for the first
appearance of the Witches is to strike the key-note of the
character of the whole drama, as is proved by their re-
appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the
king's as establishes their supernatural power of informa-
tion. I say information, — for so it only is as to Glamis
and Cawdor ; the 'king hereafter' was still contingent, —
still in Macbeth' s moral will ; although, if he should yield
to the temptation, and thus forfeit his free agency, the
link of cause and effect more physico would then com-
mence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that
can be required from the poet, — not a scholastic logical
consistency in all the parts so as to meet metaphysical
objectors. But O ! how truly Shakspearian is the opening
of Macbeth's character given in the unpossessedness of
Banquo's mind, whoU}^ present to the present object, —
an unsullied, unscarified mirror ! — And how strictly true
to nature it is, that Banquo, and not Macbeth himself,
directs our notice to the effect produced on Macbeth's
mind, rendered temptible by previous dalliance of the
fancy with ambitious thoughts :
Notes on Macbeth 159
Good Sir, why do you start ; and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair ?
And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches : —
I' the name of truth.
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye sho^ ?
Banquo's questions are those of natural curiosity, — such
as a girl would put after hearing a gipsy tell her school-
fellow's fortune ; — all perfectly general, or rather planless.
But Macbeth, lost in thought, raises himself to speech
only by the Witches being about to depart : —
Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more : —
and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already
discussed in his mind, — on a hope which he welcomes, and
the doubts concerning the attainment of which he wishes
to have cleared up. Compare his eagerness, — the keen
eye with which he has pursued the Witches' evanishing —
Speak, I charge you !
with the easily satisfied mind of the self -uninterested
Banquo : —
The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them : — Whither are they vanished ?
and then Macbeth's earnest reply, —
Into the air ; and what seem'd corporal, melted
As breath into the wind. — ' Would they had staid I
Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile
'as breath,' &c., in a cold climate ?
Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common
spectator :
Were such things here as we do speak about ?
whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concern-
ing :—
Your children shall be kings.
Ban. You shall be king.
Macb. And thane of Cawdor too : went it not so ?
So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed
cause, and immediate temptation ! Before he can cool.
i6o Notes on Macbeth
the confirmation of the tempting half of the prophecy
arrives, and the concatenating tendency of the imagination
is fostered by the sudden coincidence : —
Glamis, and thane of Cawdor :
The greatest is behind.
Oppose this to Banquo's simple surprise : — >
What, can the devil speak true ?
lb. Banquo's speech : —
That, trusted home.
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown.
Besides the thane of Cawdor.
I doubt whether 'enkindle' has not another sense than
that of 'stimulating ;' I mean of 'kind' and 'kin,' as when
rabbits are said to 'kindle.' However Macbeth no longer
hears any thing ah extra : —
Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.
Then in the necessity of recollecting himself —
1 thank you, gentlemen.
Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his
soliloquy shows the early birth-date of his guilt. He is
all-powerful without strength ; he wishes the end, but is
irresolute as to the means ; conscience distinctly warns
him, and he lulls it imperfectly : —
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me
Without my stir.
Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed
lest others may suspect what is passing in his own mind,
and instantly vents the lie of ambition :
My dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten ; —
And immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies
of a usurper in intention : —
Kind gentlemen, your pains
Are register'd where every day I turn
The leaf to read them.
Notes on Macbeth i6i
lb. Macbeth's speech :
Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
Warburton's note, and substitution of 'feats' for 'fears.*
Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering,
which, nevertheless, was the very Warburton of Warburton
— his inmost being ! 'Fears,' here, are present fear-
striking objects, terrihilia adstantia.
lb. sc. 4. O ! the affecting beauty of the death of
Cawdor, and the presentimental speech of the king :
There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face :
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust —
Interrupted by —
O worthiest cousin !
Dn the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor
tiad made way ! And here in contrast with Duncan's
'plenteous joys,' Macbeth has nothing but the common-
places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with 'our
duties.' Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth's addresses
to the king, his reasoning on his allegiance, and then
especially when a new difficulty, the designation of a
successor, suggests a new crime. This, however, seems
the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realizing his
wishes ; and here, therefore, with great propriety,
Macbeth's cowardice of his own conscience discloses
itself. I always think there is something especially Shak-
spearian in Duncan's speeches throughout this scene, such
pourings forth, such abandonments, compared with the
language of vulgar dramatists, whose characters seem to
have made their speeches as the actors learn them.
lb. Duncan's speech : —
Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter
The Prince of Cumberland : which honour must
Not unaccompanied, invest him only ;
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.
It is a fancy ; — but I can never read this and the follow-
F
1 62 Notes on Macbeth
ing speeches of Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking
of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan.
lb. sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so
as at the same time to reveal her own character. Could
he have every thing he v/anted, he would rather have it
innocently ; — ignorant, as alas ! how many of us are, that
he who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will
the means ; and hence the danger of indulging fancies.
Lady Macbeth, hke all in Shakspeare, is a class individua-
lized : — of high rank, left much alone, and feeding herself
with day-dreams of ambition, she mistakes the courage
of fantasy for the power of bearing the consequences of the
realities of guilt. Hers is the mock fortitude of a mind
deluded by ambition ; she shames her husband with a
superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support,
but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal
agony. Her speech :
Come, all you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, &c.
is that of one who had habitually familiarized her imagina-
tion to dreadful conceptions, and was trying to do so still
more. Her invocations and requisitions are all the false
efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto to the shadows
of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day
substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought
into direct contact with their own correspondent realities.
She evinces no womanly life, no wifely joy, at the return
of her husband, no pleased terror at the thought of his
past dangers, whilst Macbeth bursts forth naturally —
My dearest love —
and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his
own thoughts to him. With consummate art she at first
uses as incentives the very circumstances, Duncan's
coming to their house, &c. which Macbeth's conscience
would most probably have adduced to her as motives of
abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared :
We will speak further.
lb. SC. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene
opens, and the free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving
nature, and rewarded in the love itself, form a highly
Notes on Macbeth 163
dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm and hypo-
critical over-much of Lady Macbeth's welcome, in which
you cannot detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is
thrown upon the 'dignities,' the general duty,
lb. sc. 7. Macbeth's speech :
We will proceed no further in this business :
He hath honor'd me of late ; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people.
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss.
Not cast aside so soon.
Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience
interpreted into prudential reasonings.
Act ii. sc. I. Banquo's speech :
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers !
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature
Gives way to in repose.
The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions
of another's guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the
cursed thoughts of sensual nature.
lb. sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing — now
that the first reahty commences. Lady Macbeth shrinks.
The most simple sound strikes terror, the most natural
consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing,
however awful, appeared a mere trifle ; conscience, which
before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential
fears, now rushes in upon him in her own veritable person :
Methought I heard a voice cry — Sleep no more I
I could not say Amen,
When they did say, God bless us !
And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by
a new state of feeling.
lb. sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few
speeches afterwards, I believe to have been written for the
mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakspeare's
consent ; and that finding it take, he with the remaining
ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the
words —
I'll devil-porter it no further : I had thought to have let in some
of all professions, that go the primrose way to th' everlasting
bonfire.
164 Notes on Macbeth
Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of
Shakspeare.
Act iii. sc. I. Compare Macbeth' s mode of working on
the murderers in this place with Schiller's mistaken scene
between Butler, Devereux, and Macdonald in Wallenstein.
(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was whoUy out of
season. Shakspeare never introduces it, but when it may
react on the tragedy by harmonious contrast.
lb. sc. 2. Macbeth's speech :
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly.
Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for
fears of selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that
selfishness, plunging still deeper in guilt and ruin.
lb. Macbeth's speech :
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.
This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and
liis mistaking his wife's opposite state.
lb. sc. 4.
Mach. It will have blood, they say ; blood will have blood :
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak ;
Augurs, and understood relations, have
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret' st man of blood.
The deed is done ; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no
additional security. He has by guilt torn himself live-
asunder from nature, and is, therefore, himself in a preter-
natural state : no wonder, then, that he is inclined to
superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens,
and super-human agencies.
Act iv. sc. I.
Len. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word,
Macduff is fled to England.
Mach. Fled to England 1
The acme of the avenging conscience.
lb. sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief,
because a variety, because domestic, and therefore sooth-
ing, as associated with the only real pleasures of life. The
Notes on Macbeth 165
conversation between Lady Macduff and her child heightens
the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of their
assassination. Shakspeare's fondness for children is every
where shown ; — in Prince Arthur, in King John ; in the
sweet scene in the Winter's Tale between Hermione and
her son ; nay, even in honest Evans's examination of
Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that Shakspeare
wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised
description of the most hateful atrocity — that he tears the
feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself
with scenes of insupportable horror — I, omitting Titus
Andronicus, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of
Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the name of
Shakspeare, not guilty.
lb. sc. 3. Malcolm's speech :
Better Macbeth,
Than such a one to reign.
The moral is — the dreadful effects even on the best
minds of the soul-sickening sense of insecurity.
lb. How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with
the whole play ! It rends, not dissolves, the heart. 'The
tune of it goes manly. ' Thus is Shakspeare always master
of himself and of his subject, — a genuine Proteus : — we
see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most distinct,
most accurate, — only more splendid, more glorified. This
is correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he
requires your sympathy and your submission ; you must
have that recipiency of moral impression without which the
purposes and ends of the drama would be frustrated, and
the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all
imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being
innocently — shall I say, deluded ? — or rather, drawn away
from ourselves to the music of noblest thought in har-
monious sounds. Happy he, who not only in the public
theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and round the
light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so pleasure-
fraught !
Alas for Macbeth ! now all is inward with him ; he has
no more prudential prospective reasonings. His wife, the
only being who could have had any seat in his affections,
dies ; he puts on despondency, the final heart-armour of
the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy
i66 Notes on The Winters Tale
and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who
cannot regard them as symbols of goodness : —
Out out, brief candle !
Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more ; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.
NOTES ON THE WINTER'S TALE.
Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent
to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention,
still a winter's tale ; yet it seems a mere indolence of the
great bard not to have provided in the oracular response
(Act ii. sc. 2) some ground for Hermione's seeming death
and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This might
have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of
the oracle, as for example : —
' Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before thit
recovery. '
The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy
of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by
the perusal of Othello, which is the direct contrast of it
in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind,
a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well
known and well defined effects and concomitants, all of
which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of
which marks its presence in Othello ; — such as, first, an
excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eager-
ness to snatch at proofs ; secondly, a grossness of concep-
tion, and a disposition to degrade the object of the passion
by sensual fancies and images ; thirdly, a sense of shame
of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of
humour, and yet from the violence of the passion forced
to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease
the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those
who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, under-
stand what is said to them, — in short, by soliloquy in the
form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and
fragmentary, manner ; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule,
Notes on The Winter's Tale 167
as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense
of duty ; and lastly, and immediately, consequent on this,
a spirit of selfish vindictiveness.
Act i. sc. I — 2.
Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and
iVrchidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on
the introduction of the kings and Hermione in the second
scene : and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate refusal
to Leontes to stay —
There is no tongue that moves ; none, none i' the world
So soon as yours, could win me ; —
prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding
to Hermione ; — which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural
from mere courtesy of sex, and the exhaustion of the will
by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in
nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once
excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione : —
Yet, good deed, Leontes,
I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind
What lady she her lord ; —
accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by
an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone
too far.
At my request, he would not : —
The first working of the jealous fit ; —
Too hot, too hot : —
The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the
merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards —
Paddling palms and pinching fingers ; —
followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue
Vvdth the little boy.
Act iii. sc. 2. Paulina's speech :
That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing ;
That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,
And damnable ingrateful. —
Theobald reads 'soul.'
I think the original word is Shakspeare's. i. My ear
feels it to be Shakspearian ; 2. The involved grammar is
1 68 Notes on The Winter's Tale
Shakspearian ; — 'show thee, being a fool naturally, to
have improved thy folly by inconstancy ; ' 3. The altera-
tion is most flat, and un-Shakspearian. As to the grossness
of the abuse — she calls him 'gross and foolish' a few lines
below.
Act iv. sc. 2. Speech of Autolycus : —
For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.
Fine as this is, and delicately characteristic of one who
had lived and been reared in the best society, and had been
precipitated from it by dice and drabbing ; yet still it
strikes against my feelings as a note out of tune, and as
not coalescing with that pastoral tint which gives such a
charm to this act. It is too Macbeth-like in the 'snapper
up of unconsidered trifles.'
lb. sc. 3. Perdita's speech : —
From Dis's waggon ! daffodils.
An epithet is wanted here, not merely or chiefly for the
metre, but for the balance, for the aesthetic logic.
Perhaps, 'golden' was the word which would set off the
'violets dim.'
lb.
Pale primroses
That die unmarried. —
Milton's —
And the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
lb. Perdita's speech : —
Even here undone :
I was not much afear'd ; for once or twice
I was about to speak, and tell him plainly,
The self-same sun, that shines upon his court,
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but
Looks on alike. Wilt please you, Sir, be gone !
{To Florizel.)
I told you, what would come of this. Beseech you,
Of your own state take care : this dream of mine,
Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch farther.
But milk my ewes, and weep.
O how more than exquisite is this whole speech ! — And
that profound nature of noble pride and grief venting
themselves in a momentary peevishness of resentment
towards Florizel : —
Wilt please you. Sir, be gone I
Notes on Othello 169
lb. Speech of Autolyciis : —
Let me have no lying ; it becomes none but tradesmen, and they
often give us soldiers the lie ; but we pay them for it in stamped
coin, not stabbing steel ; — therefore they do not give us the lie.
As we pay them, they, therefore, do not give it us.
NOTES ON OTHELLO.
Act i. sc. I.
Admirable is the preparation, so truly and peculiarly
Shakspearian, in the introduction of Roderigo, as the dupe
on whom lago shall first exercise his art, and in so doing
display his own character. Roderigo, without any fixed
principle, but not without the moral notions and sym-
pathies with honour, which his rank and connections had
hung upon him, is already well fitted and predisposed for
the purpose ; for very want of character and strength of
passion, like wind loudest in an empty house, constitute
his character. The first three lines happily state the nature
and foundation of the friendship between him and lago, —
the purse, — as also the contrast of Roderigo's intemperance
of mind with lago's coolness, — the coolness of a precon-
ceiving experimenter. The mere language of protestation —
If ever I did dream of such a matter, abhor me, —
which falling in with the associative link, determines
Roderigo's continuation of complaint —
Thou told'st me, thou didst hold him in thy hate —
elicits at length a true feeling of lago's mind, the dread
of contempt habitual to those, who encourage in themselves,
and have their keenest pleasure in, the expression of con-
tempt for others. Observe lago's high self-opinion, and
the moral, that a wicked man will employ real feelings, as
well as assume those most alien from his own, as instru-
ments of his purposes : —
And, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.
I think Tyrwhitt's reading of 'life' for Svife' —
A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife —
lyo Notes on Othello
the true one, as fitting to lago's contempt for whatever did
not display power, and that intellectual power. In what
follows, let the reader feel how by and through the glass
of two passions, disappointed vanity and envy, the very
vices of which he is complaining, are made to act upon
him as if they were so many excellences, and the more
appropriately, because cunning is always admired and
wished for by minds conscious of inward weakness ; — but
they act only by half, like music on an inattentive auditor,
swelling the thoughts which prevent him from listening
to it.
lb.
Rod. "SVliat a full fortune does the thick-lips owe,
If he can carry 't thus.
Roderigo turns off to Othello ; and here comes one,
if not the only, seeming justification of our blackamoor
or negro Othello. Even if we supposed this an uninter-
rupted tradition of the theatre, and that Shakspeare him-
self, from want of scenes, and the experience that nothing
could be made too marked for the senses of his audience,
had practically sanctioned it, — would this prove aught
concerning his own intention as a poet for all ages ? Can
we imagine him so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous
negro plead royal birth, — at a time, too, when negroes
were not known except as slaves ? — As for lago's language
to Brabantio, it implies merely that Othello was a Moor,
that is, black. Though I think the rivalry of Roderigo
sufficient to account for his wilful confusion of Moor and
Negro, — yet, even if compelled to give this up, I should
think it only adapted for the acting of the day, and should
complain of an enormity built on a single word, in direct
contradiction to lago's 'Barbary horse.' Besides, if we
could in good earnest believe Shakspeare ignorant of the
distinction, still why should we adopt one disagreeable
possibility instead of a ten times greater and more pleasing
probability ? It is a common error to mistake the epithets
apphed by the dramatis personcB to each other, as truly
descriptive of what the audience ought to see or know.
No doubt Desdemona saw Othello's visage in his mind ;
yet, as we are constituted, and most surely as an Enghsh
audience was disposed in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this
beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro.
Notes on Othello 171
It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance,
in Desdemona, which Shakspeare does not appear to have
in the least contemplated,
lb. Brabantio's speech : —
This accident is not unlike my dream : —
The old careful senator, being caught careless, transfers
his caution to his dreaming power at least,
lb. lago's speech : —
— For their souls,
Another of his fathom they have not.
To lead their business : —
The forced praise of Othello followed by the bitter hatred
of him in this speech ! And observe how Brabantio's
dream prepares for his recurrence to the notion of philtres,
and how both prepare for carrying on the plot of the
arraignment of Othello on this ground.
lb. sc. 2.
0th, 'Tis better as it is.
How well these few words impress at the outset the
truth of Othello's own character of himself at the end —
'that he was not easily wrought !' His self-government
contradistinguishes him throughout from Leontes.
lb. Othello's speech : —
— And my demerits
May speak, unbonnetted —
The argument in Theobald's note, where 'and bonnetted*
is suggested, goes on the assumption that Shakspeare could
not use the same word differently in different places ;
whereas I should conclude, that as in the passage in Lear
the word is employed in its direct meaning, so here it is
used metaphorically ; and this is confirmed by what has
escaped the editors, that it is not 'I,' but 'my demerits'
that may speak unbonnetted, — without the symbol of a
petitioning inferior.
lb. Othello's speech : —
So please your grace, my ancient ;
A man he is of honesty and trust :
To his conveyance I assign my wife.
Compare this with the behaviour of Leontes to his true
friend Camillo.
172 Notes on Othello
lb. sc. 3.
Bra. Look to her, Moor ; have a quick eye to see ;
She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee.
0th. My life upon her faith.
In real life, how do we look back to little speeches as
presentimental of, or contrasted with, an affecting event !
Even so, Shakspeare, as secure of being read over and over,
of becoming a family friend, provides this passage for his
readers, and leaves it to them.
lb. lago's speech : —
Virtue ? a fig 1 'tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus, &c.
This speech comprises the passionless character of lago.
It is all will in intellect ; and therefore he is here a bold
partizan of a truth, but yet of a truth converted into a
falsehood by the absence of all the necessary modifications
caused by the frail nature of man. And then comes the
last sentiment, —
Our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof
I take this, that you call — love, to be a sect or scion !
Here is the true lagoism of, alas ! how many 1 Note
lago's pride of mastery in the repetition of 'Go, make
money ! ' to his anticipated dupe, even stronger than his
love of lucre : and when Roderigo is completely won —
I am chang'd. I'll go sell all my land —
when the effect has been fully produced, the repetition of
triumph —
Go to ; farewell ; put money enough in your purse !
The remainder — lago's soliloquy — the motive-hunting of
a motiveless malignity — how awful it is ! Yea, whilst he
is still allowed to bear the divine image, it is too fiendish
for his own steady view, — for the lonely gaze of a being
next to devil, and only not quite devil, — and yet a char-
acter which Shakspeare has attempted and executed,
without disgust and without scandal !
Dr. Johnson has remarked that little or nothing is want-
ing to render the Othello a regular tragedy, but to have
opened the play with the arrival of OtheUo in Cyprus, and
to have thrown the preceding act into the form of narration.
Here then is the place to determine, whether such a change
Notes on Othello 173
would or would not be an improvement ; — nay, (to throw
down the glove with a full challenge) whether the tragedy
would or not by such an arrangement become more regular,
— that is, more consonant with the rules dictated by
universal reason, on the true common-sense of mankind,
in its application to the particular case. For in all acts
of judgment, it can never be too often recollected, and
scarcely too often repeated, that rules are means to ends,
and, consequently, that the end must be determined and
understood before it can be known what the rules are or
ought to be. Now, from a certain species of drama, pro-
posing to itself the accomplishment of certain ends, —
these partly arising from the idea of the species itself, but
in part, likewise, forced upon the dramatist by accidental
circumstances beyond his power to remove or control, —
three rules have been abstracted ; — in other words, the
means most conducive to the attainment of the proposed
ends have been generalized, and prescribed under the
names of the three unities, — the unity of time, the unity
of place, and the unity of action, — which last would,
perhaps, have been as appropriately, as well as more
intelligibly, entitled the unity of interest. With this last
the present question has no immediate concern : in fact,
its conjunction with the former two is a mere delusion of
words. It is not properly a rule, but in itself the great
end not only of the drama, but of the epic poem, the lyric
ode, of all poetry, down to the candle-flame cone of an
epigram, — nay of poesy in general, as the proper generic
term inclusive of all the fine arts as its species. But of
the unities of time and place, which alone are entitled to
the name of rules, the history of their origin will be their
best criterion. You might lake the Greek chorus to a
place, but you could not bring a place to them without as
palpable an equivoque as bringing Birnam wood to
Macbeth at Dunsinane. It was the same, though in a
less degree, with regard to the unity of time : — the positive
fact, not for a moment removed from the senses, the
presence, I mean, of the same identical chorus, was a con-
tinued measure of time ; — and although the imagination
may supersede perception, yet it must be granted to be an
imperfection — however easily tolerated — to place the two
in broad contradiction to each other. In truth, it is a
mere accident of terms ; for the Trilogy of the Greek
174 Notes on Othello
theatre was a drama in three acts, and notwithstanding
this, what strange contrivances as to place there are in the
Aristophanic Frogs. Besides, if the law of mere actual
perception is once violated — as it repeatedly is even in the
Greek tragedies — why is it more difficult to imagine three
hours to be three years than to be a whole day and night ?
Act ii. sc. I.
Observe in how many ways Othello is made, first, our
acquaintance, then our friend, then the object of our
anxiety, before the deeper interest is to be approached !
lb.
Mont. But, good lieutenant, is your general wiv'd ?
Cas. Most fortunately : he hath achiev'd a maid
That paragons description, and wild fame ;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.
And, in the essential vesture of creation,
Does bear all excellency.
Here is Cassio's warm-hearted, yet perfectly disengaged,
praise of Desdemona, and sympathy with the 'most
fortunately' wived Othello ; — and yet Cassio is an enthusi-
astic admirer, almost a worshipper, of Desdemona. O,
that detestable code that excellence cannot be loved in
any form that is female, but it must needs be selfish !
Observe Othello's 'honest,' and Cassio's 'bold' lago, and
Cassio's full guileless-hearted wishes for the safety and
love raptures of Othello and 'the divine Desdemona.'
And also note the exquisite circumstance of Cassio's
kissing lago's wife, as if it ought to be impossible that the
dullest auditor should not feel Cassio's religious love of
Desdemona's purity. lago's answers are the sneers
which a proud bad intellect feels towards women, and
expresses to a wife. Surely it ought to be considered a
very exalted compliment to women, that all the sarcasms
on them in Shakspeare are put in the mouths of villains,
lb.
Des. I am not merry ; but I do beguile, &c.
The struggle of courtesy in Desdemona to abstract her
attention.
lb.
{lago aside). He takes her by the palm : Ay, well said, whisper ;
with as little a web as this, will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio.
Ay, smile upon her, do, &c.
Notes on Othello 175
The importance given to trifles, and made fertile by the
villany of the observer.
lb. lago's dialogue with Roderigo :
This is the rehearsal on the dupe of the traitor's inten-
tions on Othello.
lb. lago's soliloquy :
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap'd into my seat.
This thought, originally by lago's own confession a mere
suspicion, is now ripening, and gnaws his base nature as his
own 'poisonous mineral' is about to gnaw the noble heart
of his general.
lb. sc. 3. Othello's speech :
I know, lago,
Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter.
Making it light to Cassio.
Honesty and love ! Ay, and who but the reader of the
play could think otherwise ?
lb. lago's soliloquy :
And what's he then that says — I play the villain ?
When this advice is free I give, and honest,
Probal to thinking, and, indeed, the course
To win the Moor again.
He is not, you see, an absolute fiend ; or, at least, he
wishes to think himself not so.
Act iii. sc. 3.
Des. Before ^Emilia here,
i give the warrant of thy place.
The over-zeal of innocence in Desdemona.
lb.
Enter Desdemona and Emilia.
0th. If she be false, O, then, heaven mocks itself !
I'll not believe it.
Divine ! The effect of mnocence and the better genius !
Act iv. sc. 3.
Mmil. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world ; and having
the world for your labour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you
might quickly make it right.
Warburton's note.
What any other man, who had learning enough, might
176
Notes on Othello
have quoted as a playful and witty illustration of his
remarks against the Calvinistic thesis, Warburton gravely
attributes to Shakspeare as intentional ; and this, too, in
the mouth of a lady's woman !
Act V. last scene. Othello's speech : —
Of one, whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tiube, &c.
Theobald's note from Warburton.
Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of
poets ! To make Othello say that he, who had killed his
wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne ! — O, how many
beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever
thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton ! Othello
wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet
not to excuse himself, — to excuse himself by accusing.
This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word
'base,' which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own
character, but as the momentary representative of Othello's
'Indian' — for I retain the old reading — means American,
a savage in genere.
Finally, let me repeat that OtheUo does not kill Desde-
mona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by
the almost superhuman art of lago, such a conviction as
any man would and must have entertained who had be-
lieved lago's honesty as OtheUo did. We, the audience,
know that lago is a villain from the beginning ; but in
considering the essence of the Shakspearian OtheUo, we
must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and
under his circumstances. Then we shaU immediately feel
the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of
the noble Moor, and the wretched fishing jealousies of
Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is,
in other respects, a fine character. OtheUo had no life but
in Desdemona : — the belief that she, his angel, had faUen
from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil
war in his heart. She is his counterpart ; and, like him,
is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsus-
piciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain
drops, which do we pity the most ?
Extremum hunc . There are three powers : —
Notes on Ben Jonson 177
Wit, which discovers partial Hkeness hidden in general
diversity; subtlety, which discovers the diversity con-
cealed in general apparent sameness ; — and profundity,
which discovers an essential unity under all the sem-
blances of difference.
Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit ; to a deep
man imagination, and he is a philosopher. Add, again,
pleasurable sensibility in the threefold form of sympathy
with the interesting in morals, the impressive in form, and
the harmonious in sound, — and you have the poet.
But combine all, — wit, subtlety, and fancy, with pro-
fundity, imagination, and moral and physical suscepti-
bility of the pleasurable, — and let the object of action be
man universal ; and we shall have — O, rash prophecy I
say, rather, we have — a Shakspeare !
NOTES ON BEN JONSON.
It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from
Ehzabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times.
One striking symptom of general coarseness of manners,
which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as,
alas ! vice versa, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions
to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants,
and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies.
This would not appear so strange to one who had been
on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian woimn
of rank : and bad as they may, too many of them, actually
be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their
language has impressed many an Englishman of the present
era with far darker notions than the same language would
have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth's or James's
courtiers. Those who have read Shakspeare only, com-
plain of occasional grossness in his plays ; but compare
him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction,
is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.
The observation I have prefixed to the Volpone is the
key to the faint interest which these noble efforts of intel-
lectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment
of the Sad Shepherd ; because in that piece only is there
any character with whom you can morally sympathize.
On the other hand, Measure for Measure is the only play
lyS Notes on Ben Jonson
of Shakspeare's in which there are not some one or more
characters, generally many, whom you follow with affec-
tionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shak-
speare's female characters, pleases me the least ; and
Measure for Measure is, indeed, the only one of his genuine
works, which is painful to me.
Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a
thankful acknowledgment to the manes of Ben Jonson,
that the more I study his writings, I the more admire
them ; and the more my study of him resembles that of
an ancient classic, in the minniicB of his rhythm, metre,
choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the
more numerous have the points of my admiration become.
I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration
cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any
advantage to the present drama would be ignorance.
The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the
Shakspearian age, with a diverse object and contrary
principle. The on€ was to present a model by imitation
of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought
to be, and supplying the rest ; — the other is to copy what
is, and as it is, — at best a tolerable, but most frequently
a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an
essential element ; in the latter an involuntary defect.
We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were an-
nounced, and the actors did not dance at all ; — and yet
such is modern comedy.
WHALLEY'S PREFACE.
But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of
names and manners was in reason and nature ; and with how little
propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture
of real life.
But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play,
the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to
which all the parts must conform ? Surely, Greek manners
in English should be a still grosser improbability than a
Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben's per-
soncB are too often not characters, but derangements ; —
the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather, — exhibitions
-of folly betraying itself in spite of existing reason and
Notes on Ben Jonson 179
prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates
every trait ; that is, not by the drollery of the circum-
stance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.
But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build
his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of re-
presenting particular persons then existing ; and that even those
characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to
have had their respective archetypes in nature and life.
This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying
him as a dramatic poet. Non quod verum est, sed quod
verisimile, is the dramatist's rule. At aU events, the poet
who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself
with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he
ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look
forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings
of, an antiquarian. Pistol, Nym and id genus omne, do
not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic
creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff. — I say wit
emphatically ; for this character so often extolled as the
masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant
to contain, any humour at all.
WHALLEY'S LIFE OF JONSON.
It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, that the greatest poet of
our nation had the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit ; and
hath preserved part of him from perishing, by putting his thoughts
and satire into modern verse.
Videlicet Pope !
He said further to Drummond, Shakspeare wanted art, and some-
times sense ; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men,
saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea
near by a hundred miles.
I HAVE often thought Shakspeare justified in this seeming
anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German
kingdom might weU be supposed to comprise a hundred
miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of
Drummond' s are more disgraceful to himself than to
Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly
Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had
said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest.
i8o Notes on Ben Jonson
But this is characteristic of a Scotchman ; he has no
notion of a jest, unless you tell him — 'This is a joke !' —
and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-
half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.
EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR.
Epilogue.
The throat of war be stopt within her land,
And turtle-footed peace dance fairie rings
About her court.
Turtle-footed is a pretty word, a very pretty word :
pray, what does it mean ? Doves, I presume, are not
dancers ; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat
or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in
slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to
be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with
€clat — a claw ?
POETASTER.
Introduction.
Light ! I salute thee, biit with wounded nen'es,
Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness.
There is no reason to suppose Satan's address to the sun
in the Paradise Lost, more than a mere coincidence with
these lines ; but were it otherwise, it would be a fine
instance, what usurious interest a great genius pays in
borrowing. It would not be difficult to give a detailed
psychological proof from these constant outbursts of
anxious self-assertion, that Jonson was not a genius, a
creative power. Subtract that one thing, and you may
safely accumulate on his name all other excellences of a
capacious, vigorous, agile, and richly-stored intellect.
Act i. sc. I.
Ovid. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be whorish —
The roughness noticed by Theobald and Whalley, may be
cured by a simple transposition : —
While fathers hard, slaves false, and bawds be whorish.
Notes on Ben Jonson i8i
Act iv. sc. 3.
Crisp. O — oblatrant — furibund — fatuate — strenuous.
O — conscious.
It would form an interesting essay, or rather series of
essays, in a periodical work, were all the attempts to
ridicule new phrases brought together, the proportion
observed of words ridiculed which have been adopted, and
are now common, such as strenuous, conscious, &c., and a
trial made how far any grounds can be detected, so that
one might determine beforehand whether a word was
invented under the conditions of assimilability to our
language or not. Thus much is certain, that the ridiculers
were as often wrong as right ; and Shakspeare himself
could not prevent the naturalization of accommodation,
remuneration, &c. ; or Swift the gross abuse even of the
word idea.
FALL OF SEJANUS.
Act i.
Arruntiiis. The name Tiberius,
I hope, will keep, howe'er he hath foregone
The dignity and power.
Silius. Sure, while he lives.
Art. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail.
To the brave issue of Germanicus ;
And they are three : too many (ha ?) for him
To have a plot upon ?
Sil. I do not know
The heart of his designs ; but, sure, their face
Looks farther than the present.
Arr. By the gods,
If I could guess he had but such a thought,
My sword should cleave him down, &c.
The anachronic mixture in this Arruntius of the Roman
republican, to whom Tiberius must have appeared as much
a tyrant as Sejanus with his James-and-Charles-the-First
zeal for legitimacy of descent, in this passage, is amusing.
Of our great names Milton was, I think, the first who
could properly be called a repubHcan. My recollections
of Buchanan's works are too faint to enable me to judge
whether the historian is not a fair exception.
i82 Notes on Ben Jonson
Act ii. Speech of Sejanus : —
Adultery ! it is the lightest ill
I will commit. A race of wicked acts
Shall flow out of my anger, and o'erspread
The world's wide face, which no posterity
Shall e'er approve, nor yet keep silent, &c.
The more we reflect and examine, examine and reflect,
the more astonished shall we be at the immense superiority
of Shakspeare over his contemporaries : — and yet what
contemporaries ! — giant minds indeed ! Think of
Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in
that age ; and yet in no genuine part of Shakspeare' s
works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ven-
triloquism as this, and too, too many other passages
ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies and the
writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism,
because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes
his own voice appear to come.
Act V. Scene of the sacrifice to Fortune. This scene
is unspeakably irrational. To believe, and yet to scoff at,
a present miracle is little less than impossible. Sejanus
should have been made to suspect priestcraft and a secret
conspiracy against him.
VOLPONE.
This admirable, indeed, but yet more wonderful than
admirable, play is from the fertility and vigour of inven-
tion, character, language, and sentiment the strongest
proof, how impossible it is to keep up any pleasurable
interest in a tale, in which there is no goodness of heart
in any of the prominent characters. After the third act,
this play becomes not a dead, but a painful, weight on the
feelings. Zeluco is an instance of the same truth. Bonario
and Celia should have been made in some way or other
principals in the plot ; which they might have been, and
the objects of interest, without having been made char-
acters. In novels, the person, in whose fate you are most
interested, is often the least marked character of the whole.
If it were possible to lessen the paramountcy of Volpone
himself, a most delightful comedy might be produced, by
Notes on Ben Jonson 183
making Celia the ward or niece of Corvino, instead of his
wife, and Bonario her lover.
EPICiENE.
This is to my feehngs the most entertaining of old Ben's
comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being
brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious
and stage-understanding play-wright ; and an actor, who
had studied Morose, might make his fortune.
Act i. sc. I. Clerimont's speech : —
He would have hanged a pewterer's 'prentice once on a Shrove
Tuesday's riot, for being o' that trade, when the rest were quiet.
The old copies read quit, i.e. discharged from working, and gone
to divert themselves. Whalley's note.
It should be quit, no doubt ; but not meaning 'dis-
charged from working,' &c. — but quit, that is, acquitted.
The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the
other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he.
But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but
in fact for his trade.
Act ii. sc. I.
Morose. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method,
than by this trunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and
mine ears the discord of sounds ?
What does 'trunk' mean here and in the ist scene oi
the 1st act ? Is it a large ear-trumpet ? — or rather a
tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of
a bell ?
Whalley's note at the end.
Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose
to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden
tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that
Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn
of mind : and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted
from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant un-
natural caricatura.
If Dryden had not made all additional pfoof superfluous
by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that
he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature
184 Notes on Ben Jonson
and conditions of the drama and dramatic personation.
Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea : —
For he knew, poet never credit gain'd
By writing truths, but things, Uke truths, well feign'd.
By 'truths* he means 'facts.' Caricatures are not less
so, because they are found existing in real life. Comedy
demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The
safest and truest defence of old Ben would be to call the
Epicaene the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in
other of Jonson's dramatis persons, lies in this ; — that the
accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished
by, the character which still circulates in it, but that the
character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists
in, the accident. Shakspeare's comic personages have
exquisitely characteristic features ; however awry, dis-
proportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like
Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are
either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its
own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the
patient thereby losing all his character ; or they are
mere wens themselves instead of men, — wens personified,
or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.
Nota bene. All the above, and much more, will have
justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson
is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shak-
spearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to
the Shakspearian be at once fairly owned, — but at the same
time as the inferiority of an altogether different genus of
the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain
his proud height. He, no less than Shakspeare, stands
on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a
master, — though his be Lattrig and Shakspeare's Skiddaw.
THE ALCHEMIST.
Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech : —
Will take his oath o' the Greek Xenophon,
If need be, in his pocket.
Another reading is 'Testament.'
Probably, the meaning is — that intending to give false
evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it off for
Notes on Ben Jonson 185
ft Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury — as the Irish do,
by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.
Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech : —
I will have all my beds blown up ; not stuft :
Down is too hard.
Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately
brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth
century !
CATILINE'S CONSPIRACY.
A FONDNESS for judging one work by comparison with
others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a
vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that the
Catiline has been rated so low. Take it and Sejanus, as
compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of
relating great historical events in the liveliest and most
interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we
had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally
expect the excitement of the Vicar of Wakefield from
Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear, Othello,
&c. from the Sejanus or Catiline.
Act i. sc. 4.
Cat. Sirrah, what ail you ?
{He spies one of his boys not answer.)
Pag. Nothing.
Best. Somewhat modest.
Cat. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, &c.
This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a
most unnatural, passage, — improbable, if not impossible,
at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy,
to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys
is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines
down to the words 'throat opens,' should be removed back
so as to follow the words 'on this part of the house,' in th<
speech of Catiline soon after the entry of the conspirators.
A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, ratheu
the only possible, amendment.
Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech : —
— He is but a new fellow,
An inmate here in Rome, as Catiline calls him—
i86 Notes on Ben Jonson
A 'lodger' would have been a happier imitation of the
utquilinus of Sallust.
Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus : —
Can these or such be any aids to us, &c.
What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a
determined, remorseless, all-daring, fool-hardiness, to have
represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bom-
bastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his 1
BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.
Induction. Scrivener's speech : —
If there be never a servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it,
he says, nor a nest of antiques ?
The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a
somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in
respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakspeare, is,
that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted.
They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as,
by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion
of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all
events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far
higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He
was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as
Shakspeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and
Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers
from, him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more
malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble
compensation by his praises.
Act ii. sc. 3.
Just. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe of booty, boy, a
cut purse.
Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot
but suggest, the propriety of substituting 'booty' for
'beauty' in Falstaff's speech, Henry IV. Pt. I. act i. sc. 2.
'Let not us, &c. ? '
It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a
modem author ; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan and
his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.
Notes on Ben Jonson 187
lb. sc. 5.
Quart. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in
Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with.
Good ! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr.
Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion
intended by Buonaparte : 'Houses plundered — then burnt ;
— sons conscribed — wives and daughters ravished/ &c., &c.
— " But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen ! with your
fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot ! "
lb. sc. 6.
Cok. Avoid i' your satin doublet, Numps.
This reminds me of Shakspeare's 'Aroint thee, witch !'
I find in several books of that age the words aloigne and
doigne — that is, 'keep your distance !' or 'off with you !'
Perhaps 'aroint' was a corruption of 'aloigne' by the
vulgar. The common etymology from ronger to gnaw
seems unsatisfactory.
Act iii. sc. 4.
Quurl. How now, Numps ! almost tired i' your protectorship ?
overparted, overparted ?
An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old
Noll!
lb. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech : —
He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth.
A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election
Dinner, — who shows how easily he might be reconciled
to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.
Act V. sc. 5.
Pup. Di. It is not prophane.
Lan. It is not prophane, he says.
Boy. It is prophane.
Pup. It is not prophane.
Boy. It is prophane.
Pup. It is not prophane.
Lan. Well said, confute him with Not, still.
An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the
Frogs in Aristophanes : —
Xopos.
dXXa fiTfjv KeKpa^6/j.i:cr9d 7',
ovhaov T) c^pvy^ 3.v i)fiCov
i88 Notes on Ben Jonson
XavSayT], St,' i}/j.ipas,
^p€KeK€K^^, Koa^, Koa^.
Ai6vva-os.
Tovri^ yap ou vLKfjcreTe.
Xop6s.
ovSk fi^v -^ftds ail iravTios.
Aiovvcos.
oid^ /j.r]v v/xeTs ye d-q fi' ovdiirore.
THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.
Act i. sc. I.
Pug. Why any : Fraud,
Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity,
Or old Iniquity, I'll call him hither.
The words in italics should probably be given to the master-
devil, Satan. Whalley's note.
That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson)
impossible violation of character. The words plainly
belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his
impatience.
lb. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy : —
Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound
philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the
bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.^
Act ii. sc. I. Meercraft's speech : —
Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge. —
I doubt not that 'money' was the first word of the line,
and has dropped out : —
Money ! Sir, money's a, &c.
THE STAPLE OF NEWS.
Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech : —
No, he would ha' done.
That lay not in his power : he had the use
Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's.
Read (1815),
— he had the use of
Your bodies, &c.
Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition
of the 'of from the beginning of this latter line to the end
^ In 1664, at Bury St. Edmonds on the trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny. Jid.
Notes on Ben Jonson 189
of the one preceding ; — for though it facilitates the metre
and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger,
this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to
have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better
reading is —
C your bodies, &c. —
the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched,
or sucked, up into the emphasized 'your.' In all points
of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just ; for in this way,
the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and
quick emphasis on 'your' which the sense requires ; — and
had not the sense required an emphasis on ' your,' the
tmesis of the sign of its cases 'of,' 'to,' &c. would destroy
almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and
prose in comedy : — a lesson not to be rash in conjectural
amendments. 1818.
lb. sc. 4.
P. jun. I love all men of virtue, frommy Princess. —
'Frommy,' fromme, pious, dutiful, &c.
Act V. sc. 4. Penny-boy sen. and Porter : —
I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in
his mind in this mock mad scene.
THE NEW INN.
Act i. sc. I. Host's speech : —
A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes. —
'Makes,' frequent in old books, and even now used in
some counties for mates, or pairs,
lb. sc. 3. Host's speech : —
— And for a leap
C the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house. —
Instead of reading with Whalley 'ply* for 'play,' I
would suggest 'horse' for 'house.' The meaning would
then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-
maggot, or pun intentional, 'horse and house,' is below
Jonson. The jeu-de-mots just below —
IQO Notes on
Read a lecture
Upon AquinsiS at St. Thomas a Waterings —
had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity,
lb. sc. 6. Lovel's speech : —
Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,
That open-handed sit upon the clouds,
And press the liberality of heaven
Down to the laps of thankful men I
Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is
tldog ;;^aX£'Toi' /deTv — a sight which it is difficult to make
one's self see, — a picture my fancy cannot copy detached
from the words.
Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet
Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in consider-
ing the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c. of this play mere dotages.
Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play ; and
Nick Stuff is worse still, — most abominable stuff indeed !
Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech : —
So knowledge first begets benevolence,
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love. —
Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far ; but the part
most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least
capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is
the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Seward's Preface. 1750.
The King And No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its char-
acters ; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles
but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity
and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chastity and
incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any
poet has drawn, &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state
to which pyschology had sunk from the reign of Charles
L to the middle of the present reign of George IIL ; and
even now it is but just awaking.
Beaumont and Fletcher igi
lb. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two
Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene —
Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning, &c.
with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy —
I stand upon the sea-beach now, &c. Act ii.
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer,
intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with
the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for
a prominent and principal figure.
lb. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A
Wife for a Month, act i. sc. i, to the passage in King John,
act V. sc. 7, —
Poison'd, ill fare ! dead, forsook, cast off I
Mr. Seward ! Mr. Seward ! you may be, and I trust you
are, an angel ; but you were an ass.
lb.
Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation
from Shakspeare.
Of what taste ?
lb. Seward's classification of the plays : —
Surely Monsieur Thomas, the Chances, Beggar's Bush,
and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first
class ! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure.
HARRIS'S COMMENDATORY POEM ON
FLETCHER.
I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath
A power to take up on common faith : —
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by
emphasis, without which our elder poets cannot be scanned.
'Power,' here, instead of being one long syllable — pow'r —
must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a
trochee ; but as — " u ; — the first syllable is ij.
We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of
our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was
a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has
studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found
192 Notes on
the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists
by Bentley, Porson, and their followers ; — how much more,
then, in writers in our own language ! It is true that
quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English
rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or
even rule ; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent ;
secondly, emphasis ; and lastly, retardation, and accelera-
tion of the times of syllables according to the meaning of
the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even
the character of the person that uses them. With due
attention to these, — above all, to that, which requires the
most attention and the finest taste, the character, Mas-
singer, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet
regular metre. But then the regulce must be first known ;
— though I will venture to say, that he who does not find
a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time total
of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright.
But by virtue of the last principle — the retardation or
acceleration of time — we have the proceleusmatic foot
K) Kj Kj Kj, and the dispondceus , not to mention
the choriamhus, the ionics, paeons, and epitrites. Since
Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense : in our
elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the
passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires
as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion
demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.
LIFE OF FLETCHER IN STOCKDALE'S
EDITION. 1811.
In general their plots are more regular than Shakspeare's. —
This is true, if true at aU, only before a court of criticism,
which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a
diverse one. Shakspeare's plots have their own laws or
regulcB, and according to these they are regular.
MAID'S TRAGEDY.
Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly
throughout.
Strat. As well as masque can be, &c.
Beaumont and Fletcher 193
and all that follows to 'who is return'd' — is plainly blank
verse, and falls easily into it.
lb. Speech of Melantius : —
These soft and silken wars are not for me :
The music must be shrill, and all confus'd.
That stirs my blood ; and then I dance with arms.
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bulhes all the
brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are ! Yet I am
inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the
Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle ; and deeper than
the fashion B. and F. did not fathom.
lb. Speech of Lysippus : —
Yes, but this lady-
Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes
Bent on the earth, &c.
Opulent as Shakspeare was, and of his opulence prodigal,
he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry
in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a
Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems
instead of tragedies,
lb.
Mel. I might run fiercely, not more hastily,
Upon my foe.
Read
I might run more fiercely, not more hastily. —
lb. Speech of Calianax : —
Office ! I would I could put it off ! I am sure I sweat quite
through my office !
The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of his robe,
and he carries on the image,
lb. Speech of Melantius : —
—Would that blood,
That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight, &c.
All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists, or cudgel-fighters,
that boast of their bottom and of the claret they have shed,
lb. The Masque ; — Cinthia's speech : —
But I will give a greater state and glory.
And raise to time a noble mem5ry
Of what these lovers are,
I suspect that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler' — o — ,
194 Notes on
was the poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed
on the penultimate of 'memory.' As to the passage —
Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power, &c.
removed from the text of Cinthia's speech by these foolish
editors cls unworthy of B. and F. — the first eight lines are
not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than
the stanza retained.
Act ii. Amintor's speecii : —
Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away-
All thoughts revengeful ! In that sacred name,
'The king,' there lies a terror.
It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians,
Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the
most servile jure divino royalist, and Shakspeare a philo-
sopher ; — if aught personal, an aristocrat.
A KING AND NO KING.
Act iv. Speech of Tigranes : —
She, that forgat the greatness of her grief
And miseries, that must follow such mad passions,
Endless and wild as women ! &c,
Seward's note and suggestion of *in.'
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend
of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this
note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there
are two solutions ; — one, that the writer was somewhat
more injudicious than usual ; — the other, that he was very,
very much more profound and Shakspearian than usual.
Seward's emendation, at aU events, is right and obvious.
Were it a passage of Shakspeare, I should not hesitate to
interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes' state of mind, dis-
liking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously
representing them as mere products of the violence of the
sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire,
and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his
own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would
be the consistency of the author. But this is above
Beaumont and Fletcher.
Beaumont and Fletcher 195
THE SCORNFUL LADY.
Act ii. Sir Roger's speech : —
Did I for this consume my quarters in meditations, vows, and
woo'd her in heroical epistles ? Did I expound the Owl, and
undertake, with labour and expense, the recollection of those
thousand pieces, consum'd in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that
our honour'd Englishman, Nic. Broughton ? &c.
Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald, nor Mr. Seward,
should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-
mouthed blank verse ! Had they seen this, they would
have seen that 'quarters' is a substitution of the players
for 'quires' or 'squares,' (that is) of paper : —
Consume my quires in meditations, vows.
And woo'd her in heroical epistles.
They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated
*Ni. Br.' of the text was properly 'Mi. Dr.' — and that
Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed
for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles.
lb. Speech of Younger Loveless : —
Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd, &c.
These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an in-
stance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre.
This is plain staring blank verse.
THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY.
I CANNOT but think that in a country conquered by a
nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter
became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, lex merchetce,
may have been introduced for wise purposes, — as of im-
proving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different
races, and producing a new bond of relationship between
the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest bom, would,
at least, have a chance of being, and a probability of being
thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it cannot
have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by
nature different from the father, and because there is no
bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery. 1815.
196
Notes on
Act i. sc. I. Rutilio's speech : —
Yet if you play not fair play, &c.
Evidently to be transposed and read thus : —
Yet if you play not fair, above-board too,
I'll tell you what —
I've a foolish engine here : — I say no more —
But if your Honour's guts are not enchanted —
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is, — a far more
lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm
of animated talk in real life tiian Massinger's — still it is
made worse than it really is by ignorance of the halves,
thirds, and two- thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted
from the Itahan and Spanish dramatists. Thus in Rutilio's
speech : —
Though I confess
Any man would desire to have her, and by any means, &c.
Correct the whole passage —
Though I confess
Any man would
Desire to have her, and by any means,
At any rate too, yet this common hangman
That hath whipt off a thousand maids' heads already —
That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach !
In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the
abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid
pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so
much a license, as a law, — a faithful copy of nature, and
let them be read characteristically, the times will be found
nearly equal. Thus the three words marked above make
a choriamhus — u u — , or perhaps a pceon primus — u u u ;
a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to
an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt
that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by
attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to
transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions.
For the rule of the metre once lost — what was to restrain
the actors from interpolation >
Beaumont and Fletcher 197
THE ELDER BROTHER.
Act i. sc. 2. Charles's speech : —
— For what concerns tillage.
Who better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks ? and to cure your herds,
His Bucolicks is a master-piece.
Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a
blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read
the passage thus :
— For what concerns tillage,
Who better can deliver it than Virgil,
In his Gdorgicks, or to cure your herds ;
(His Bucolicks are a master-piece.) But when, &c.
Jealous of Virgil's honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to
the Georgics alone, he might be understood as under-
valuing the preceding work. 'Not that I do not admire
the Bucolics, too, in their way : — But when, &c.'
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech : —
— She has a face looks like a story ;
The story of the heavens looks very like her.
Seward reads 'glory;' and Theobald quotes from
Phil aster —
That reads the story of a woman's face. —
I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward ;
— the passage from Philaster is nothing to the purpose.
Instead of * a story,' I have sometimes thought of proposing
'Astraea.'
lb. Angelina's speech : —
— You're old and dim. Sir,
And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment.
Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines
in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech : —
And lets the serious part of life run by
As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name.
You must be mine, &c.
Seward's note, and reading —
— Whiteness of name.
You must be mine I
198 Notes on
Nonsense ! 'Whiteness of name' is in apposition to
'the serious part of Ufe/ and means a deservedly pure
reputation. The following line — 'You must be mine!'
means — 'Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall here-
after, and without reproach. '
THE SPANISH CURATE.
Act iv. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech : —
And still I push'd him on, as he had been coming.
Perhaps the true word is 'conning,' that is, learning, or
reading, and therefore inattentive.
WIT WITHOUT MONEY,
Act i. Valentine's speech : —
One without substance, &c.
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally
vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though
the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold con-
jectural reformation. I would read thus : —
One without substance of herself, that's woman ;
Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton ;
Tho' she be young, forgetting it ; tho' fair.
Making her glass the eyes of honest men,
Not her own admiration,
'That's wanton,' or, 'that is to say, wantonness.*
Act ii. Valentine's speech : —
Of half-a-crown a week for pins and puppets —
As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here. Seward.
A syllable wanting ! Had this Seward neither ears nor
fingers ? The line is a more than usually regular iambic
hendecasyUable.
lb.
With one man satisfied, with one rein guided ;
With one faith, one content, one bed ;
Aged, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue ;
A widow is. &c.
Beaumont and Fletcher 199
Is 'apaid' — contented — too obsolete for B. and F. ? If
not, we might read it thus : —
Content with one faith, with one bed apaid.
She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue ; —
Or it may be —
— with one breed apaid —
that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to —
A widow is a Christmas-box, &c.
Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into
metre.
The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were
ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of
the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled
them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except
where prose is really intended.
THE HUMOROUS LIEUTENANT.
Act i. sc. I. Second Ambassador's speech : —
— When your angers,
Like so many brother billows, rose together,
And, curling up your foaming crests, defied, &c.
This worse than superfluous 'like' is very like an inter-
polation of some matter of fact critic — all pus, prose atque
venemim. The 'your' in the next hne, instead of 'their,'
is likewise yours, Mr. Critic !
Act ii. sc. I. Timon's speech : —
Another of a new way will be look'd at. —
We must suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new day.' So immedi-
ately after,
Time may
For all his wisdom, yet give us a day.
Seward's Note.
For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary,
lb. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe : —
I'll put her into action for a wastcoat. —
What we call a riding-habit, — some mannish dress.
200 Notes on
THE MAD LOVER.
Act iv. Masque of beasts : —
— This goodly tree,
An usher that still grew before his lady,
Wither'd at root : this, for he could not woo,
A grumbling lawyer : &c.
Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to 'tree ;*
and the words of the next Une have been transposed : —
— This goodly tree.
Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see,
An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew,
Wither'd at root : this, for he could not woo, &c.
THE LOYAL SUBJECT.
It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe,
noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in
the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobasan age —
(Mercy on me ! what a phrase for 'the writers during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James L !') — in respect of their
political opinions. Shakspeare, in this as in all other
things, himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of
human nature, and the only predilection, which appears,
shews itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy.
Massinger is a decided Whig ; — Beaumont and Fletcher
high-flying, passive-obedience Tories. The Spanish dra-
matists furnished them with this, as with many other
ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar acquaint-
ance with all the productions of the Spanish stage pre-
viously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an
editor of B. and F, ; — and with this qualification a most
interesting and instructive edition might be given. This
edition of Colman's (Stockdale 181 1,) is below criticism.
In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakspeare, on the
one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and
to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre
with the natural rhythm of conversation, — in which,
indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, and
measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more
legitimate, — none in which the substitution of equipollent
Beaumont and Fletcher 201
feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with
such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the
twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as —
Too many fears 'tis thought too : and to nourish those —
This has, often, a good effect, and is one of the varieties
most common in Shakspeare.
RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE.
Act iii. Old Woman's speech : —
— I fear he will knock my
Brains out for lying.
Mr. Seward discards the words 'for lying,' because 'most
of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little
exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of
measure.' Colman's note.
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humour lies in
Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these
tales of her ; for though an intriguer, she is not represented
as other than chaste ; and as to the metre, it is perfectly
correct,
lb.
Marg. As you love me, give way.
Leon, It shall be better, I will give none, madam, &c.
The meaning is : 'It shall be a better way, first ; — as it
is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood
would wish.'
THE LAWS OF CANDY.
Act i. Speech of Melitus : —
Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride
Can by no character be well express' d.
But in her only name, the proud Erota.
Colman's note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word 'Erota*
itself ; but says that her very name, 'the proud Erota,'
202 Notes on
became a character and adage ; as we say, a Quixote or a
Brutus : so to say an 'Erota,' expressed female pride and
insolence of beauty.
lb. Speech of Antinous : —
Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd
From successary, but purchas'd with my blood. —
The poet doubtless wrote 'successry/ which, though
not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions,
as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.
THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER.
Act i. sc. I. Dinant's speech : —
Are you become a patron too ? 'Tis a new one,
No more on't, &c.
Seward reads : —
Are you become a patron too ? How long
Have you been conning this speech ? 'Tis a new one, &c.
If conjectural emendation, hke this, be allowed, we might
venture to read : —
or,
lb.
Are you become a patron to a new tune ?
Are you become a patron ? 'Tis a new tune.
Din. Thou wouldst not willingly
Live a protested coward, or be call'd one ?
Cler. Words are but words.
Din. Nor wouldst thou take a blow ?
Seward's note.
O miserable ! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity,
and the actor is to explain it. 'Words are but words/ is
the last struggle of affected morality.
VALENTINIAN.
Act i. sc. 3.
It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable
temper towards Fletcher. So very slavisli — so reptile —
Beaumont and Fletcher 203
are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And
yet remember he was a bishop's son, and the duty to God
was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion ;
— property, subordination, and inter-community ; — these
are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion
negatively taken, — so that the person be not compelled to
do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be,
in that person, a lie ; — such as to force a man to go to
church, or to swear that he believes what he does not
believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and
useful privilege, but cannot be a right, — were it for this
only that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this
distinction between negative and positive religion, as a
social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is
encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe
respecting the super-sensual ; but should every man be
entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear
any preacher ? Now it is different in respect of loyalty.
There we have positive rights, but not negative rights ; —
for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive ;
— as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself, whether
he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these
fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the
guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the
rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is le^s
than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the
temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value
from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so
neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. All
must be attacked and endangered. Why ? Because the
king, as a. to A., is a mean to A. or subordination, in a far
higher sense than a proprietor, as 6. to B. is a mean to B.
or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech : —
Chimney-pieces 1 &c.
The whole of this speech seems corrupt ; and if accu-
rately printed, — that is, if the same in all the prior editions,
irremediable but by bold conjecture. 'Till my tackle,*
should be, I think, while, &c.
Act iii. sc. I. B. and F. always write as if virtue or
goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something,
204 Notes on
that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the
owner. In short their chaste ladies value their chastity
as a material thing, — not as an act or state of being ; and
this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their
women are represented with the minds of strumpets,
except a few irrational humorists, far less capable of ex-
citing our sympathy than a Hindoo, who has had a bason
of cow-broth thrown over him ; — for this, though a debas-
ing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor
wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and
F.'s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the
authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but only
such a conception as a blind man might have of the power
of seeing, by handHng an ox's eye. In The Queen of
Corinth, indeed, they talk differently ; but it is all talk,
and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation.
Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even
those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakspeare's. So,
for instance. The Maid in the Mill : — a woman must not
merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over
every abomination committed in them with a rampant
sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk
with the minuticB of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces
hers to have been.
It would be worth while to note how many of these plays
are founded on rapes, — how many on incestuous passions,
and how many on mere lunacies. Then their virtuous
women are either crazy superstitions of a merely bodily
negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their
imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill,
both at the same time. In the men, the love is merely
lust in one direction, — exclusive preference of one object.
The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the mouths
of indignant denouncers of the t5n-ant's character, with
the substitution of T for 'he,' and the omission of the
prefatory 'he acts as if he thought' so and so. The only
feelings they can possibly excite are disgust at the Aeciuses,
if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion, if considered
as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even
their comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantas-
ticalness, or gross caricature, of the persons or incidents.
There are few characters that you can really like, — (even
though you should have erased from your mind all the
Beaumont and Fletcher 205
filth which bespatters the most Ukeable of them, as Piniero
in The Island Princess for instance,) — scarcely one whom
you can love. How different this from Shakspeare, who
makes one have a sort of sneaking affection even for his
Barnardines ; — whose very lagos and Richards are awful,
and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects,
rendered fearful rather than hateful ; — and even the ex-
ceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of superlative
judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter
monsters, mdla virtiUe redeniptcB, and in being kept out of
sight as much as possible, — they being, indeed, only means
for the excitement and deepening of noblest emotions
towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the
severest economy ! But even Shakspeare's grossness —
that which is really so, independently of the increase in
modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent
— (for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that
the language of Hamlet at Ophelia's feet might be a harm-
less rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would
exist in Paradise) — at the worst, how diverse in kind is it
from Beaumont and Fletcher's ! In Shakspeare it is the
mere generalities of sex, mere words for the most part,
seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy-
drolleries ; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker.
I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.
ROLLO.
This is, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies.
He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo ; — but
as in all his other imitations of Shakspeare, he was not
philosopher enough to bottom his original. Thus, in
Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous
wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses
to make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophi-
cally intelligible. Hence the most pathetic situations
border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible,
is either hateful, ro fxicrirov^ or ludicrous. The scene of
Baldwin's sentence in the third act is probably the grandest
working of passion in all B. and F.'s dramas ; — but the
very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this
2o6 Notes on
noble scene, renders the after scene — (in imitation of one
of the least Shakspearian of all Shakspeare's works, if it
be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne,) — in
which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only
unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakspeare, Lady Anne is
described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.
Act i. sc. I.
Gis. He is indeed the perfect character
Of a good man, and so his actions speak him.
This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this
and several other plays of the same authors, are interesting
as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach
in the reigns of James 1. and his successor, who died a
martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion, — all con-
spired to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe
the opposite spirit ; Shakspeare's the spirit of wisdom
which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists
— Calderon, in particular, — had some influence in this
respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as
well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.
THE WILDGOOSE CHASE.
Act ii. sc. I. Belleur's speech :—
— That wench, methinks,
If I were but well set on, for she is a fable.
If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me.
Sympson reads 'affable,' which Colman rejects, and says,
'the next line seems to enforce' the reading in the text.
Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense,
'seemingly enforced by the next line,' consists. May the
true word be 'a sable,' that is, a black fox, hunted for its
precious fur ? Or 'at-able,' — as we now say, — 'she is
come-at-able ?'
Beaumont and Fletcher 207
A WIFE FOR A MONTH.
Act iv. sc. I. Alphonso's speech : —
BetAvixt the cold bear and the raging lion
Lies my safe way.
Seward's note and alteration to —
'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion —
This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species.
In his itch for correction, he forgot the words — 'Hes my
safe way !' The Bear is the extreme pole, and thither
he would travel over the space contained between it and
'the raging lion.'
THE PILGRIM.
Act iv. sc. 2.
Alinda's interview with her father is lively, and happily
hit off ; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent.
Altogether, indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and
F.'s romantic entertainments, Lusispiele, which collectively
are their happiest performances, and are only inferior to the
romance of Shakspeare in the As You Like It, Twelfth
Night, &c.
lb.
Alin. To-day you shall wed Sorrow,
And Repentance will come to-morrow.
Read 'Pentience,' or else —
Repentance, she will come to-morrow.
THE QUEEN OF CORINTH.
Act ii. sc. I.
Merione's speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy
been laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods
here addressed been the Veeshnoo and Co. of the Indian
Pantheon, this rant would not have been much amiss.
2o8 Notes on
In respect of style and versification, this play and the
following of Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet
as characteristic, specimens of Beaumont and Fletcher's
dramas. I particularly instance the first scene of the
Bonduca. Take Shakspeare's Richard II., and having
selected some one scene of about the same number of lines,
and consisting mostly of long speeches, compare it with the
first scene in Bonduca, — not for the idle purpose of finding
out which is the better, but in order to see and under-
stand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you
will find a well arranged bed of flowers, each having its
separate root, and its position determined aforehand by the
will of the gardener, — each fresh plant a fresh volition. In
the former you see an Indian figtree, as described by
Milton; — all is growth, evolution, yiveffig ; — each line,
each word almost, begets the following, and the will of
the writer is an interfusion, a continuous agency, and not
a series of separate acts. Shakspeare is the height, breadth,
and depth of Genius : Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent
mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent.
THE NOBLE GENTLEMAN.
Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James
I. and the first Charles become almost obsolete, with the
exception of Shakspeare ? Why do they no longer belong
to the English, being once so popular ? And why is Shak-
speare an exception ? — One thing, among fifty, necessary
to the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and
poetic diction on unpoetic subjects, both characters and
situations, especially in their comedy. Now Shakspeare
is all, all ideal, — of no time, and therefore for all times.
Read, for instance. Marine's panegyric in the first scene
of this play : —
Know
The eminent court, to them that can be wise,
And fasten on her blessings, is a sun, &c.
What can be more unnatural and inappropriate — (not
only is, but must be felt as such) — than such poetry in
the mouth of a silly dupe ? In short, the scenes are mock
dialogues, in which the poet solus plays the ventriloquist,
but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself.
Beaumont and Fletcher 209
Heavy complaints have been made respecting the trans-
posing of the old plays by Gibber ; but it never occurred
to these critics to ask, how it came that no one ever at-
tempted to transpose a comedy of Shakspeare's.
THE CORONATION.
Act i. Speech of Seleucus : —
Altho' he be my enemy, should any
Of the gay flies that buz about the court,
Sit to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so,
I durst, &c.
Colman's note.
Pshaw ! 'Sit' is either a misprint for 'set,' or the old and
still provincial word for 'set/ as the participle passive of
'seat' or 'set.' I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener
say : — " Look, Sir ! I set these plants here ; those yonder
I sit yesterday."
Act ii. Speech of Arcadius : —
Nay, some will swear they love their mistress.
Would hazard lives and fortunes, &c.
Read thus : —
Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so.
They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve
One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's,
Or young Apollo's ; and yet, after this, &c.
'They would hazard' — furnishes an anapaest for an iambus.
'And 5^et,' which must be read, anyei, is an instance of the
enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. 'And yet,'
is a complete iambus ; but anyet is, like spirit, a dibrach
o u, trocheized, however, by the arsis or first accent
damping, though not extinguishing, the second.
WIT AT SEVERAL WEAPONS.
Act i. Oldcraft's speech :
I'm arm'd at all points, &c.
It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre,
by supplying a sentence of four syllables, which the reason-
2IO Notes on
ing almost demands, and by correcting the grammar.
JRead thus : —
Arm'd at all points 'gainst treachery, I hold
My humour firm. If, living, I can see thee
Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage,
Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not,
The best wit, I can hear of, carries them.
For since so many in my time and knowledge.
Rich children of the city, have concluded
For lack of wrt in beggary, I'd rather
Make a wise stranger my executor.
Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call'd
After my wit than name : and that's my nature !
lb. Oldcraft's speech : —
To prevent which I have sought out a match for her. —
Read
Which to prevent I've sought a match out for her.
lb. Sir Gregory's speech : —
Do you think
I'll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am married once ?
Read it thus : —
Do you think
That I'll have any of the wits to hang
Upon me after I am married once ?
and afterwards —
Is it a fashion in London
To marry a woman, and to never see her ?
The superfluous 'to' gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek
character.
THE FAIR MAID OF THE INN.
Act ii. Speech of Albertus : —
But, Sir,
By my life, I vow to take assurance from you,
That right hand never more shall strike my son,
:»: « * * 4: «
Chop his hand off !
In this (as, indeed, in all other respects ; but most in this)
it is that Shakspeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher 211
and his friend, — in judgment ! What can be conceived
more unnatural and motiveless than this brutal resolve ?
How is it possible to feel the least interest in Albertus
afterwards ? or in Cesario after his conduct ?
THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN.
Ox comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite,
Act ii. sc. 2, with the dialogue between the same speakers,
Act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely retain a doubt as to the first act's
having been written by Shakspeare. Assuredly it was not
written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable than
either of these two.
The main presumption, however, for Shakspeare's share
in this play rests on a point, to which the sturdy critics
of this edition (and indeed all before them) were blind, —
that is, the construction of the blank verse, which proves
beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the proper
hand, of Shakspeare. Now, whatever improbability there
is in the former, (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the
inferiority, the too poematic wmz^s-dramatic nature, of
his versification, and of which there is neither proof, nor
likelihood), adds so much to the probabihty of the latter.
On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very
passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-
breathings, and still more the want of profundity in the
thoughts, keep me from an absolute decision.
Act i. sc. 3. Emilia's speech : —
Since his depart, his sports,
Tho' craving seriousness and skill, &c.
I conjecture 'unports,' that is, duties or offices of import-
ance. The flow of the versification in this speech seems
to demand the trochaic ending — o ; while the text blends
jingle and hisses to the annoyance of less sensitive ears
than Fletcher's — not to say, Shakspeare's.
212 Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher
THE WOMAN HATER.
Act i. sc. 2.
This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank
verse, down to the line —
E'en all the valiant stomachs in the court —
where the verse recommences. This transition from the
prose to the verse enhances, and indeed forms, the comic
effect. Lazarillo concludes his soliloquy with a hymn to
the goddess of plenty.
A COURSE OF LECTURES.
PROSPECTUS.
There are few families, at present, in the higher and
middle classes of English society, in which literary topics
and the productions of the Fine Arts, in some one or other
of their various forms, do not occasionally take their turn
in contributing to the entertainment of the social board,
and the amusement of the circle at the fire side. The ac-
quisitions and attainments of the intellect ought, indeed,
to hold a very inferior rank in our estimation, opposed to
moral worth, or even to professional and specific skill,
prudence, and industry. But why should they be opposed,
when they may be made subservient merely by being sub-
ordinated ? It can rarely happen, that a man of social
disposition, altogether a stranger to subjects of taste,
(almost the only ones on which persons of both sexes can
converse with a common interest) should go through the
world without at times feeling dissatisfied with himself.
The best proof of this is to be found in the marked anxiety
which men, who have succeeded in life without the aid
of these accomplishments, shew in securing them to their
children. A young man of ingenuous mind will not wilfully
deprive himself of any species of respect. He will wish
to feel himself on a level with the average of the society
in which he lives, though he may be ambitious of dis-
tinguishing himself only in his own immediate pursuit
or occupation.
Under this conviction, the following Course of Lectures
was planned. The several titles will best explain the
particular subjects and purposes of each : but the main
objects proposed, as the result of all, are the two following.
I. To convey, in a form best fitted to render them im-
pressive at the time, and remembered afterwards, rules
and principles of sound judgment, with a kind and degree
of connected information, such as the hearers cannot
214 Prospectus of a
generally be supposed likely to form, collect, and arrange
for themselves, by their own unassisted studies. It might
be presumption to say, that any important part of these
Lectures could not be derived from books ; but none, I
trust, in supposing, that the same information could not
be so surely or conveniently acquired from such books as
are of commonest occurrence, or with that quantity of time
and attention which can be reasonably expected, or even
wisely desired, of men engaged in business and the active
duties of the world.
2. Under a strong persuasion that Uttle of read value
is derived by persons in general from a wide and various
reading ; but still more deeply convinced as to the actual
mischief of unconnected and promiscuous reading, and
that it is sure, in a greater or less degree, to enervate even
where it does not likewise inflate ; I hope to satisfy many
an ingenuous mind, seriously interested in its own develop-
ment and cultivation, how moderate a number of volumes,
if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice for the
attainment of every wise and desirable purpose ; that is,
in addition to those which he studies for specific and pro-
fessional purposes. It is saying less than the truth to
affirm, that an excellent book, (and the remark holds
almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a
well chosen and well tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not
of one season only. With the due and natural intervals,
we may recur to it year after year, and it wiU supply the
same nourishment and the same gratification, if only we
ourselves return to it with the same healthful appetite.
The subjects of the Lectures are indeed very different,
but not, (in the strict sense of the term) diverse ; they
are various, rather than miscellaneous. There is this bond
of connexion common to them all, — that the mental
pleasure which they are calculated to excite, is not de-
pendent on accidents of fashion, place, or age, or the events
or the customs of the day ; but commensurate with the
good sense, taste, and feeling, to the cultivation of which
they themselves so largely contribute, as being all in kind,
though not all in the same degree, productions of genius.
What it would be arrogant to promise, I may yet be
pennitted to hope, — that the execution will prove cor-
respondent and adequate to the plan. Assuredly, my
best efiorts have not been wanting so to select and prepare
Course of Lectures 215
the materials, that, at the conclusion of the Lectures, an
attentive auditor, who should consent to aid his future
recollection by a few notes taken either during each Lecture,
or soon after, would rarely feel himself, for the time to
come, excluded, from taking an intelligent interest in any
general conversation likely to occur in mixed society.
Syllabus of the Course.
L January 27, 1818. — On the manners, morals, litera-
ture, philosophy, religion, and the state of society in
general, in European Christendom, from the eighth to the
fifteenth century, (that is from a.d. 700, to a.d. 1400),
more particularly in reference to England, France, Italy,
and Germany ; in other words, a portrait of the so-called
dark ages of Europe.
IL January 30. — On the tales and metrical romances
common, for the most part, to England, Germany, and
the north of France, and on the English songs and ballads,
continued to the reign of Charles L A few selections will be
made from the Swedish, Danish, and German languages,
translated for the purpose by the Lecturer.
IIL February 3. — Chaucer and Spenser ; of Petrarch ;
of Ariosto, Pulci, and Boiardo.
IV. V. VI. February 6, 10, 13. — On the dramatic works
of Shakspeare. In these Lectures will be comprised the
substance of Mr. Coleridge's former courses on the same
subject, enlarged and varied by subsequent study and
reflection.
VII. February 17. — On Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, and Massinger ; with the probable causes of
the cessation of dramatic poetry in England \^ith Shirley
and Otway, soon after the restoration of Charles II.
VIII. February 20. — Of the hfe and all the works of
Cervantes, but chiefly of his Don Quixote. The ridicule
of knight errantry shewn to have been but a secondary
object in the mind of the author, and not the principal
cause of the delight which the work continues to give to aU
nations, and under all the revolutions of manners and
opinions.
IX. February 24. — On Rabelais, Swift, and Sterne :
on the nature and constituents of genuine Humour, and
2i6 Course of Lectures
on the distinctions of the Humorous from the Witty, the
Fanciful, the Droll, and the Odd.
X. February 27. — Of Donne, Dante, and Milton.
XL March 3. — On the Arabian Nights' Entertainments,
and on the romantic use of the supernatural in poetry,
and in works of fiction not poetical. On the conditions
and regulations under which such books may be employed
advantageously in the earlier periods of education.
XII. March 6. — On tales of witches, apparitions, &c.
as distinguished from the magic and magicians of Asiatic
origin. The probable sources of the former, and of the
belief in them in certain ages and classes of men. Criteria
by which mistaken and exaggerated facts may be dis-
tinguished from absolute falsehood and imposture. Lastly,
the causes of the terror and interest which stories of ghosts
and witches inspire, in early life at least, whether believed
or not.
XIII. March 10. — On colour, sound, and form in Nature,
as connected with poesy : the word " Poesy " used as the
generic or class term, including poetry, music, painting,
statuary, and ideal architecture, as its species. The re-
ciprocal relations of poetry and philosophy to each other ;
and of both to religion, and the moral sense.
XIV. March 13. — On the corruptions of the English
language since the reign of Queen Anne in our style of
writing prose. A few easy rules for the attainment of a
manly, unaffected, and pure language, in our genuine
mother tongue, whether for the purpose of writing, oratory,
or conversation.
LECTURE U
General Character of the Gothic Mind in
the Middle Ages.
Mr. Coleridge began by treating of the races of mankind
as descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and therein
of the early condition of man in his antique form. He
then dwelt on the pre-eminence of the Greeks in Art and
Philosophy, and noticed the suitableness of polytheism
to small insulated states, in which patriotism acted as
1 From Mr. Green's note taken at the delivery. Ed,
Lecture I. 217
a substitute for religion, in destroying or suspending self.
Afterwards, in consequence of the extension of the Roman
empire, some universal or common spirit became necessary
for the conservation of the vast body, and this common
spirit was, in fact, produced in Christianity. The causes
of the decline of the Roman empire were in operation long
before the time of the actual overthrow ; that overthrow
had been foreseen by many eminent Romans, especially
by Seneca. In fact, there was under the empire an Italian
and a German party in Rome, and in the end the latter
prevailed.
He then proceeded to describe the generic character of
the Northern nations, and defined it as an independence
of the whole in the freedom of the individual, noticing
their respect for women, and their consequent chivalrous
spirit in war ; and how evidently the participation in the
general council laid the foundation of the representative
form of government, the only rational mode of preserving
individual liberty in opposition to the Ucentious democracy
of the ancient republics.
He called our attention to the peculiarity of their art,
and showed how it entirely depended on a symbolical
expression of the infinite, — which is not vastness, nor
immensity, nor perfection, but whatever cannot be cir-
cumscribed within the Hmits of actual, sensuous being. In
the ancient art, on the contrary, every thing was finite and
material. Accordingly, sculpture was not attempted by
the Gothic races till the ancient specimens were discovered,
whilst painting and architecture were of native growth
amongst them. In the earliest specimens of the paintings
of modern ages, as in those of Giotto and his associates in
the cemetery at Pisa, this complexity, variety, and sym-
bolical character are evident, and are more fully developed
in the mightier works of Michel Angelo and Raffael. The
contemplation of the works of antique art excites a feeling
of elevated beauty, and exalted notions of the human self ;
but the Gothic architecture impresses the beholder with
a sense of self-annihilation ; he becomes, as it were, a part
of the work contemplated. An endless complexity and
variety are united into one whole, the plan of which is not
distinct from the execution. A Gothic cathedral is the
petrefaction of our religion. The only work of truly
modem sculpture is the Moses of Michel Angelo.
2i8 Course of Lectures
The Northern nations were prepared by their own
previous rehgion for Christianity ; they, for the most part
received it gladly, and it took root as in a native soil. The
deference to woman, characteristic of the Gothic races,
combined itself with devotion in the idea of the Virgin
Mother, and gave rise to many beautiful associations. ^
Mr. C. remarked how Gothic an instrument in origin
and character the organ was.
He also enlarged on the influence of female character
on our education, the first impressions of our childhood
being derived from women. Am.ongst oriental nations,
he said, the only distinction was between lord and slave.
With the antique Greeks, the will of every one conflicting
with the will of all, produced licentiousness ; with the
modem descendants from the northern stocks, both these
extremes were shut out, to reappear mixed and condensed
into this principle or temper ; — submission, but with free
choice, illustrated in chivalrous devotion to women as such,
in attachment to the sovereign, &c.
LECTURE II.2
General Character of the Gothic Literature
and Art.
In my last lecture I stated that the descendants of Japhet
and Shem peopled Europe and Asia, fulfilling in their
distribution the prophecies of Scripture, while the descen-
dants of Ham passed into Africa, there also actually
verifying the interdiction pronounced against them. The
Keltic and Teutonic nations occupied that part of Europe,
which is now France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark,
&c. They were in general a hardy race, possessing great
fortitude, and capable of great endurance. The Romans
slowly conquered the more southerly portion of their
tribes, and succeeded only by their superior arts, their
policy, and better discipline. After a time, when the
Goths, — to use the name of the noblest and most historical
1 The reader may compare the last two paragraphs with the lirst of Schlegel's Pre-
lections on Dramatic Art and Literature — Vol. i. /»/ 10-16, 2nd edit. — and with
Schelling Ueber das Verhdltniss der bildcnden Kiinste, p. 377 ; though the resem-
blance in thought is but general.
3 From Mr. William Hammond's note taken at th« delivery. Ed.
Lecture II. 219
of the Teutonic tribes, — had acquired some knowledge of
these arts from mixing with their conquerors, they invaded
the Roman territories. The hardy habits, the steady
perseverance, the better faith of the enduring Goth rendered
him too formidable an enemy for the corrupt Roman, who
was more inclined to purchase the subjection of his enemy,
than to go through the suffering necessary to secure it.
The conquest of the Romans gave to the Goths the Christian
religion as it was then existing in Italy ; and the light and
graceful building of Grecian, or Roman-Greek order,
became singularly combined with the massy architecture
of the Goths, as wild and varied as the forest vegetation
which it resembled. The Greek art is beautiful. When
I enter a Greek Church, my eye is charmed, and my mind
elated ; I feel exalted, and proud that I am a man. But
the Gothic art is sublime. On entering a cathedral, I
am filled with devotion and with awe ; I am lost to the
actualities that surround me, and my whole being expands
into the infinite ; earth and air, nature and art, all swell
up into eternity, and the only sensible impression left, is
'that I am nothing ! ' This religion, while it tended to
soften the manners of the Northern tribes, was at the same
time highly congenial to their nature. The Goths are
free from the stain of hero worship. Gazing on their
rugged mountains, surrounded by impassable forests,
accustomed to gloomy seasons, they lived in the bosom
of nature, and worshipped an invisible and unknown deity.
Firm in his faith, domestic in his habits, the life of the Goth
was simple and dignified, yet tender and affectionate.
The Greeks were remarkable for complacency and com-
pletion ; they delighted in whatever pleased the eye ; to
them it was not enough to have merely the idea of a
divinity, they must have it placed before them, shaped
in the most perfect symmetry, and presented with the
nicest judgment : and if we look upon any Greek produc-
tion of art, the beauty of its parts, and the harmony of their
union, the complete and complacent effect of the whole,
are the striking characteristics. It is the same in their
poetry. In Homer you have a poem perfect in its form,
whether originally so, or from the labour of after critics,
I know not ; his descriptions are pictures brought vividly
before 570U, and as far as the eye and understanding are
concerned, I am indeed gratified. But if I wish my feelings
220 Course of Lectures
to be affected, if I wish my heart to be touched, if I wish
to melt into sentiment and tenderness, I must turn to the
heroic songs of the Goths, to the poetry of the middle ages.
The worship of statues in Greece had, in a civil sense, its
advantage, and disadvantage; advantage, in promoting
statuary and the arts ; disadvantage, in bringing their
gods too much on a level with human beings, and thence
depriving them of their dignity, and gradually giving
rise to scepticism and ridicule. But no statue, no artificial
emblem, could satisfy the Northman's mind ; the dark
wild imagery of nature which surrounded him, and the
freedom of his hfe, gave his mind a tendency to the infinite,
so that he found rest in that which presented no end, and
derived satisfaction from that which was indistinct.
We have few and uncertain vestiges of Gothic literature
till the time of Theodoric, who encouraged his subjects
to write, and who made a collection of their poems. These
consisted chiefly of heroic songs, sung at the Court ; for
at that time this was the custom. Charlemagne, in the
beginning of the ninth century, greatly encouraged letters,
and made a further collection of the poems of his time,
among which were several epic poems of great merit ; or
rather in strictness there was a vast cycle of heroic poems,
or minstrelsies, from and out of which separate poems
were composed. The form of poetry was, however, for
the most part, the metrical romance and heroic tale.
Charlemagne's army, or a large division of it, was utterly
destroyed in the Pyrenees, when returning from a successful
attack on the Arabs of Navarre and Arragon ; yet the
name of Roncesvalles became famous in the songs of the
Gothic poets. The Greeks and Romans would not have
done this ; they would not have recorded in heroic verse
the death and defeat of their fellow-countrymen. But
the Goths, firm in their faith, with a constancy not to be
shaken, celebrated those brave men who died for their
religion and their country ! What, though they had been
defeated, they died without fear, as they had lived without
reproach ; they left no stain on their names, for they fell
fighting for their God, their hberty, and their rights ; and
the song that sang that day's reverse animated them to
future victory and certain vengeance.
I must now turn to our great monarch, Alfred, one of
the most august characters that any age has ever produced ;
Lecture IL 221
and when I picture him after the toils of government and
the dangers of battle, seated by a solitary lamp, translating
the holy scriptures into the Saxon tongue, — when I reflect
on his moderation in success, on his fortitude and per-
severance in difficulty and defeat, and on the wisdom and
extensive nature of his legislation, I am really at a loss
which part of this great man's character most to admire.
Yet above all, I see the grandeur, the freedom, the mildness,
the domestic unity, the universal character of the middle
ages condensed into Alfred's glorious institution of the
trial by jury. I gaze upon it as the immortal symbol of
that age ; — an age called indeed dark ; — but how could
that age be considered dark, which solved the difficult
problem of universal liberty, freed man from the shackles
of tyranny, and subjected his actions to the decision of
twelve of his fellow-countrymen ? The liberty of the
Greeks was a phenomenon, a meteor, which blazed for a
short time, and then sank into eternal darkness. It was
a combination of most opposite materials, slavery and
liberty. Such can neither be happy nor lasting. The
Goths on the other hand said, You shall be our Emperor ;
but we must be Princes on our own estates, and over them
you shall have no power ! The Vassals said to their Prince,
We will serve you in your wars, and defend your castle ;
but we must have liberty in our own circle, our cottage,
our cattle, our proportion of land. The Cities said. We
acknowledge you for our Emperor ; but we must have
our walls and our strong holds, and be governed by our
own laws. Thus all combined, yet all were separate ; all
served, yet all were free. Such a government could not exist
in a dark age. Our ancestors may not indeed have been
deep in the metaphysics of the schools ; they may not have
^one in the fine arts ; but much knowledge of human
nature, much practical wisdom must have existed amongst
them, when this admirable constitution was formed ; and
I beUeve it is a decided truth, though certainly an awful
lesson, that nations are not the most happy at the time
when hterature and the arts flourish the most among them.
The translations I had promised in my syllabus I shall
defer to the end of the course, when I shall give a single
lecture of recitations illustrative of the different ages of
poetry. There is one Northern tale I will relate, as it is
one from which Shakspeare derived that strongly marked
222 Course of Lectures
and extraordinary scene between Richard III. and the
Lady Anne. It may not be equal to that in strength and
genius, but it is, undoubtedly, superior in decorum and
delicacy.
A Knight had slain a Prince, the lord of a strong castle,
in combat. He afterAvards contrived to get into the castle,
where he obtained an interveiw with the Princess's atten-
dant, whose life he had saved in some encounter ; he told
her of his love for her mistress, and won her to his interest.
She then slowly and gradually worked on her mistress's
mind, spoke of the beauty of his person, the fire of his
eyes, the sweetness of his voice, his valour in the field, his
gentleness in the court ; in short, by watching her oppor-
tunities, she at last fiUed the Princess's soul with this one
image ; she became restless ; sleep forsook her ; her
curiosity to see this Knight became strong ; but her maid
still deferred the interview, tiU at length she confessed she
was in love with him ; — the Knight is then introduced,
and the nuptials are quickly celebrated.
In this age there was a tendency in writers to the droll
and the grotesque, and in the little dramas which at that
time existed, there were singular instances of these. It
was the disease of the age. It is a remarkable fact that
Luther and Melancthon, the great religious reformers of
that day, should have strongly recommended, for the
education of children, dramas, which at present would
be considered highly indecorous, if not bordering on a
deeper sin. From one which they particularly recom-
mended, I wiU give a few extracts ; more I should not
think it right to do. The play opens with Adam and Eve
washing and dressing their children to appear before the
Lord, who is coming from heaven to hear them repeat the
Lord's Prayer, Belief, &c. In the next scene the Lord ap-
pears seated like a schoolmaster, with the children stand-
ing round, when Cain, who is behindhand, and a sad
pickle, comes running in with a bloody nose and his hat
on. Adam says, " What, with your hat on ! " Cain then
goes up to shake hands with the Almighty, when Adam
says (giving him a cuff), " Ah, would you give your left
hand to the Lord ? " At length Cain takes his place in
the class, and it becomes his turn to say the Lord's Prayer.
At this time the Devil (a constant attendant at that time)
makes his appearance, and getting behind Cain, whispers
Lecture III. 223
in his ear ; instead of the Lord's Prayer, Cain gives it so
changed by the transposition of the words, that the meaning
is reversed ; yet this is so artfully done by the author,
that it is exactly as an obstinate child would answer, who
knows his lesson, yet does not choose to say it. In the last
scene, horses in rich trappings and carriages covered with
gold are introduced, and the good children are to ride in
them and be Lord Mayors, Lords, &c. ; Cain and the bad
ones are to be made cobblers and tinkers, and only to
associate with such.
This, with numberless others, was written by Hans
Sachs. Our simple ancestors, firm in their faith, and pure
in their morals, were only amused by these pleasantries,
as they seemed to them, and neither they nor the reformers
feared their having any influence hostile to religion.
When I was many years back in the north of Germany,
there were several innocent superstitions in practice.
Among others at Christmas, presents used to be given to
the children by the parents, and they were delivered on
Christmas day by a person who personated, and was
supposed by the children to be, Christ : early on Christmas
morning he called, knocking loudly at the door, and (having
received his instructions) left presents for the good and
a rod for the bad. Those who have since been in Germany
have found this custom relinquished ; it was considered
profane and irrational. Yet they have not found the
children better, nor the mothers more careful of their
offspring ; they have not found their devotion more
fervent, their faith more strong, nor their m.orality more
pure.^
LECTURE in.
The Troiihadours — Boccaccio — Petrarch—
Pulci — Chaucer — Spenser.
The last Lecture was allotted to an investigation into the
origin and character of a species of poetry, the least influenced
of any by the literature of Greece and Rome, — that in
which the portion contributed by the Gothic conquerors,
1 See this custom of Kn«cht Rupert more minutely described in Mr. Coleridge's own
letter from Germany, published in the 2nd vol. of the Friend, p. 320. £d.
224 Course of Lectures
the predilections and general tone or habit of thought
and feeling, brought by our remote ancestors with them
from the forests of Germany, or the deep dells and rocky
mountains of Norway, are the most prominent. In the
present Lecture I must introduce you to a species of poetry,
which had its birth-place near the centre of Roman glory,
and in which, as might be anticipated, the influences of
the Greek and Roman muse are far more conspicuous, —
as, great, indeed, as the efforts of intentional imitation on
the part of the poets themselves could render them. But
happily for us and for their own fame, the intention of
the writers as men is often at complete variance with the
genius of the same men as poets. To the force of their
intention we owe their mythological ornaments, and the
greater definiteness of their imagery ; and their passion
for the beautiful, the voluptuous, and the artificial, we
must in part attribute to the same intention, but in part
likewise to their natural dispositions and tastes. For the
same climate and many of the same circumstances were
acting on them, which had acted on the great classics,
whom they were endeavouring to imitate. But the love
of the marvellous, the deeper sensibility, the higher rever-
ence for womanhood, the characteristic spirit of sentiment
and courtesy, — these were the heir-looms of nature, which
still regained the ascendant, whenever the use of the
living mother-language enabled the inspired poet to appear
instead of the toilsome scholar.
From this same union, in which the soul (if I may dare
so express myself) was Gothic, while the outward forms
and a majority of the words themselves, were the reUques
of the Roman, arose the Romance, or romantic language,
in which the Troubadours or Love-singers of Provence
sang and v^Tote, and the different dialects of which have
been modified into the modem Italian, Spanish, and
Portuguese ; while the language of the Trouveurs, Trou-
veres, or Norman-French poets, forms the intermediate
link between the Romance or modified Roman, and the
Teutonic, including the Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and the
upper and lower German, as being the modified Gothic.
And as the northernmost extreme of the Norman-French,
or that part of the link in which it formed on the Teutonic,
we must take the Norman-English minstrels and metrical
romances, from the greater predominance of the Anglo-
Lecture III. 225
Saxon Gothic in the derivation of the words. I mean,
that the language of the EngUsh metrical romance is less
romanized, and has fewer words, not originally of a northern
origin, than the same romances in the Norman-French ;
which is the more striking, because the former were for
the most part translated from the latter ; the authors of
which seem to have eminently merited their name of
Trouveres, or inventors. Thus then we have a chain with
two rings or staples : — at the southern end there is the
Roman, or Latin ; at the northern end the Keltic, Teutonic,
or Gothic ; and the links beginning with the southern end,
are the Romance, including the Provencal, the Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese, with their different dialects,
then the Norman-French, and lastly the English.
My object in adverting to the Italian poets, is not so
much for their own sakes, in which point of view Dante
and Ariosto alone would have required separate Lectures,
but for the elucidation of the merits of our countrymen,
as to what extent we must consider them as fortunate
imitators of their Italian predecessors, and in what points
they have the higher claims of original genius. Of Dante,
I am to speak elsewhere. Of Boccaccio, who has little
interest as a metrical poet in any respect, and none for
my present purpose, except, perhaps, as the reputed in-
ventor or introducer of the octave stanza in his Teseide,
it will be sufficient to say, that we owe to him the subjects
of numerous poems taken from his famous tales, the happy
art of narration, and the still greater merit of a depth and
fineness in the workings of the passions, in which last
excellence, as likewise in the wild and imaginative char-
acter of the situations, his almost neglected romances
appear to me greatly to excel his far famed Decameron.
To him, too, we owe the more doubtful merit of having
introduced into the Italian prose, and by the authority
of his name and the influence of his example, more or less
throughout Europe, the long interwoven periods, and
architectural structure which arose from the very nature
of their language in the Greek writers, but which already
in the Latin orators and historians, had betrayed a species
of effort, a foreign something, which had been superinduced
on the language, instead of growing out of it ; and which
was far too alien from that individualizing and confederat-
ing, yet not blending, character of the North, to become
H
226 Course of Lectures
permanent, although its magnificence and stateliness were
objects of admiration and occasional imitation. This style
diminished the control of the writer over the inner feehngs
of men, and created too great a chasm between the body
and the life ; and hence especially it was abandoned by
Luther.
But lastly, to Boccaccio's sanction we must trace a large
portion of the mythological pedantry and incongruous
paganisms, which for so long a period deformed the poetry,
even of the truest poets. To such an extravagance did
Boccaccio himself carry this folly, that in a romance of
chivalry he has uniformly styled God the Father Jupiter,
our Saviour Apollo, and the Evil Being Pluto. But for
this there might be some excuse pleaded. I dare make
none for the gross and disgusting licentiousness, the daring
profaneness, which rendered the Decameron of Boccaccio
the parent of a hundred worse children, fit to be classed
among the enemies of the human race ; which poisons
Ariosto — (for that I may not speak oftener than necessary
of so odious a subject, I mention it here once for all) —
which interposes a painful mixture in the humour of
Chaucer, and which has once or twice seduced even our
pure-minded Spenser into a grossness, as heterogeneous
from the spirit of his great poem, as it was alien to the
delicacy of his morals.
PETRARCH.
Born at Arezzo, 1304. — Died 1374.
Petrarch was the final blossom and perfection of the
Troubadours. See Biog. Lit. vol. ii. p. 27, &c.
NOTES ON PETRARCH'S ^ SONNETS, CANZONES, &c.
VOL. I.
Good.
Sonnet, i. Voi, ch' ascoltate, &c.
7. La gola, e '1 sonno, &c.
11. Se la mia vita, &c.
12. Quando fra I'altre, <&c.
1 These notes, by Mr. C, are written in a Petrarch in my possession, and ar« of
Bome date before 1812. It is hoped that they will not seem ill placed here. Ed.
Lecture III. 227
18. Vergognando talor, &c.
25. Quanto piu m' avvicino, &c.
28. Solo e pensoso, &c.
29. S' io credessi, &c.
Canz. 14. Si e debile il filo, &c.
Pleasing.
Ball. i. Lassare il velo, &c.
Canz. i. Nel dolce tempo, &c.
This poem was imitated by our old Herbert ; ^ it is ridicu-
lous in the thoughts, but simple and sweet in diction.
Dignified.
Canz. 3. O aspettata in ciel, &c.
9. Gentil mia Donna, &c.
The first half of this ninth canzone is exquisite ; and in
canzone 8, the nine lines beginning
O poggi, o valli, &c.
to cura, are expressed with vigour and chastity.
Canz. 9. Daquel dl innanzi a me medesmo piacqui,
Empiendo d'un pensier' alto, e soave
Quel core, ond" hanno i begli occhi la chiave.
Note. 0 that the Pope would take these eternal keys,
which so for ever turn the bolts on the finest passages of
true passion !
VOL. II.
Canz. i. Che debb' io far ? &c.
Very good ; but not equal, I think, to Canzone 2,
Amor, se vuoi ch' i' torni, &c.
though less faulty. With the omission of half-a-dozen
conceits and Petrarchisms of hooks, baits, flames, and
torches, this second canzone is a bold and impassioned
lyric, and leaves no doubt in my mind of Petrarch's having
possessed a true poetic genius. Utinam deleri possint
sequentia : —
L. 17 — 19. e la soave fiamma
Ch' ancor, lasso ! m' infiamraa
Essendo spenta, or che fea dunque ardendo ?
1 If George Herbert is meant, I can find nothing like an imitation of this canzone ia
his poems. £d.
228 Course of Lectures
L. 54 — 56. ov' erano a tutt' ore
Disposti gli ami ov' io fui preso, e 1' esca
Ch' i' bramo sempre.
L. 76 — 79. onde 1' accese
Saette uscivan d' invisibil foco,
E ragion temean poco ;
Che contra '1 ciel non val difesa umana.
And the lines 86, 87.
Poser' in dubbio, a cui
Devesse il pregio di piu laude darsi —
are rather flatly worded.
LUIGI PULCI.
Bom at Florence, 1431. — Died about 1487.
Pulci was of one of the noblest families in Florence, re-
ported to be one of the Frankish stocks which remained
in that city after the departure of Charlemagne : —
Pulcia Gallorum soboles descendit in urbem,
Clara quid em bello, sacris nee inhospita Musis.
Verino de illustrat. Cort. Flor. III. v. 118.
Members of this family were five times elected to the
Priorate, one of the highest honours of the republic. Pulci
had two brothers, and one of their wives, Antonia, who
were all poets : —
Carminibus patriis notissima Pulcia proles ;
Quis non hanc urbem Musarum dicat amicam,
Si tres producat fratres domus una poetas ?
lb. II. V. 241.
Luigi married Lucrezia di Uberto, of the Albizzi family,
and was intimate with the great men of his time, but more
especially with Angelo Politian, and Lorenzo the Magnifi-
cent. His Morgante has been attributed, in part at least, ^
to the assistance of Marsilius Ficinus, and by others the
whole has been attributed to Pohtian. The first conjecture
is utterly improbable ; the last is possible, indeed, on ac-
count of the licentiousness of the poem ; but there are
no direct grounds for believing it. The Morgante Maggiore
is the first proper romance ; although, perhaps, Pulci had
the Teseide before him. The story is taken from the
fabulous history of Turpin ; and if the author had any
1 Meaning the 25th canto. Ed.
Lecture III. 229
distinct object, it seems to have been that of making him-
self merry with the absurdities of the old romancers. The
Morgante sometimes makes you think of Rabelais. It
contains the most remarkable guess or allusion upon the
subject of America that can be found in any book published
before the discovery. ^ The well known passage in the
tragic Seneca is not to be compared with it. The copia
verhorum of the mother Florentine tongue, and the easiness
of his style, afterwards brought to perfection by Berni, are
the chief merits of Pulci ; his chief demerit is his heartless
spirit of jest and buffoonery, by which sovereigns and their
courtiers were flattered by the degradation of nature, and
the impossihilifxation of a pretended virtue.
1 The reference is, of course, to the following stanzas : —
Disse Astarotte : nn error lungo e fioco
Per molti secol non ben conosciuto,
Fa che si dice d' Ercol le colonne,
E che pill la molti periti sonne.
Sappi che questa opinione e vana ;
Perche piu oltre navicar si puote,
Pero che 1' acqua in ogni parte e plana,
Benche la terra abbi forma di ruote :
Era piu grossa allor ia gente humana ;
Talche potrebbe arrosirne le gote
Ercule ancor d' aver posti que' segni,
Perche piu oitre passeranno i legni.
E puossi andar giii ne 1' altro emisperio,
Pero che al centro ogni cosa reprime ;
Si che la terra per divin misterio
Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
E Ik giii son citta, castella, e imperio ;
Ma nol cognobbon quelle genti prime ;
Vedi che il sol di camminar s' affretta.
Dove io ti dico che Ik giu s' aspetta.
E come un segno surge in Oriente,
Un altro cade con mirabll arte,
Come si vede qua ne 1' Occidente,
Peri che il ciel giustamente comparte ;
Antipodi appellata e quella gente;
Adora il sole e Jupiterre e Marte,
E piante e animal come voi hanno,
E spesso insieme gran battaglie fanno.
C. XXV. St. 228, &C.
The Morgante was printed in 1488. Ed. Another very curious anticipation, said to
have been first noticed by Amerigo Vespucci, occurs in Dante's Furgatorio :
I mi volsi a man destra e posi mente
All 'altro polo : e vidi quattro stelle
Non viste mai, fuor ch' alia prima gente.
C. L. I. 22-4.
230 Course of Lectures
CHAUCER.
Born in London, 1328. — Died 1400.^
Chaucer must be read with an eye to the Norman-French
Trouveres, of whom he is the best representative in Enghsh.
He had great powers of invention. As in Shakspeare, his
cha,racters represent classes, but in a different manner ;
Sliakspeare's characters are the representatives of the
interior nature of humanity, in which some element has
become so predominant as to destroy the health of the
mind ; whereas Chaucer's are rather representatives of
classes of manners. He is therefore more led to indivi-
dualize in a mere personal sense. Obser^^e Chaucer's love
of nature ; and how happily the subject of his main work
is chosen. When you reflect that the company in the
Decameron have retired to a place of safety, from the
raging of a pestilence, their mirth provokes a sense of their
unfeelingness ; whereas in Chaucer nothing of this sort
occurs, and the scheme of a party on a pilgrimage, with
different ends and occupations, aptly allows of the greatest
variety of expression in the tales.
SPENSER.
Bom in London, 1553. — Died 1599.
There is this difference, among many others, between
Shakspeare and Spenser : — Shakspeare is never coloured
by the customs of his age ; what appears of contemporary
character in him is merely negative ; it is just not some-
thing else. He has none of the fictitious realities of the
classics, none of the grotesquenesses of chivalry, none of the
allegory of the middle ages ; there is no sectarianism either
of politics or religion, no miser, no witch, — no common
witch, — no astrology — nothing impermanent of however
long duration ; but he stands like the yew tree in Lorton
vale, which has known so many ages that it belongs to none
in particular ; a living image of endless self-reproduction,
like the immortal tree of Malabar. In Spenser the spirit of
1 From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
Lecture III. 231
chivalry is entirely predominant, although with a much
greater infusion of the poet's own individual self into it than
is found in any other writer. He has the wit of the
southern with the deeper inv/ardness of the northern genius.
No one can appreciate Spenser without some reflection on
the nature of allegorical writing. The mere etymological
meaning of the word, allegory, — to talk of one thing and
thereby convey another, — is too wide. The true sense is
this, — the employment of one set of agents and images to
convey in disguise a moral meaning, with a likeness to the
imagination, but with a difference to the understanding, —
those agents and images being so combined as to form a
homogeneous whole. This distinguishes it from metaphor,
which is part of an allegory. But allegory is not properly
distinguishable from fable, otherwise than as the first
includes the second, as a genus its species ; for in a fable
there must be nothing but what is universally known and
acknowledged, but in an allegory there may be that which
is new and not previously admitted. The pictures of the
great masters, especially of the Italian schools, are genuine
allegories. Amongst the classics, the multitude of their
gods either precluded allegory altogether, or else made
every thing allegory, as in the Hesiodic Theogonia ; for
you can scarcely distinguish between pov^^er and the per-
sonification of power. The Cupid and Psyche of, or found
in, Apuleius, is a phsenomenon. It is the Platonic mode
of accounting for the fall of man. The Battle of the Soul ^
by Prudentius is an early instance of Christian allegory.
Narrative allegory is distinguished from mythology as
reality from symbol ; it is, in short, the proper inter-
medium between person and personification. Where it is
too strongly individuafized, it ceases to be allegory ; this
is often felt in the Pilgrim's Progress, where the characters
are real persons with nicknames. Perhaps one of the most
curious warnings against another attempt at narrative
aUegory on a great scale, may be found in Tasso's account
of what he himself intended in and by his Jerusalem
Delivered.
As characteristic of Spenser, I would call your particular
attention in the first place to the indescribable sweetness
and fluent projection of his verse, very clearly distinguish-
able from the deeper and more inwoven harmonies of
1 Psychomachia. jEJ.
232 Course of Lectures
Shakspeare and Milton. This stanza is a good instance of
what I mean : —
Yet she, most faithfull ladie, all this while
Forsaken, wofull, solitarie mayd,
Far from all peoples preace, as in exile,
In wildernesse and wsLstfull deserts strayd
To seeke her knight ; who, subtily betrayd
Through that late vision which th' enchaunter wrought,
Had her abandond ; she, of nought affrayd.
Through woods and wastnes wide him daily sought.
Yet wished tydinges none of him unto her brought.
F. Qu. B. I. c. 3. St. 3.
2. Combined with this sweetness and fluency, the
scientific construction of the metre of the Faery Queene is
very noticeable. One of Spenser's arts is that of allitera-
tion, and he uses it with great effect in doubling the im-
pression of an image : —
In wildernesse and tyastful deserts, —
Through ^^;oods and t»:-'a.stnes z£^ilde, —
They pcisse the bitter waves of Acheron,
Where many soules sit wa.\lmg zfoefully,
And come to^ery ;?ood of Phlegeton,
Whereas the damned ghosts in torments fry,
And with sharp shrilling shrieks doth bootlesse cry, — Sec.
He is particularly given to an alternate alliteration, which
is, perhaps, when well used, a great secret in melody : —
A ramping lyon rushed suddenly, —
And sad to see her sorrowful constraint, —
And on the grasse her c^aintie /imbes did lay, — &c.
You cannot read a page of the Faery Queene, if you read
for that purpose, without perceiving the intentional
alliterativeness of the words ; and yet so skilfully is this
managed, that it never strikes any unwarned ear as arti-
ficial, or other than the result of the necessary movement of
the verse.
3. Spenser displays great skill in harmonizing his de-
scriptions of external nature and actual incidents with the
allegorical character and epic activity of the poem. Take
these two beautiful passages as illustrations of what I
mean : —
By this the northerne wagoner had set
His sevenfol teme behind the stedfast starre
That was in ocean waves yet never wet,
But firme is fixt, and sendeth light from farre
Lecture III. 233
To all that in the wide deepe wandring aire ;
And chearefull chaunticlere with his note shrill
Had warned once, that Phoebus' fiery carre
In hast was climbing up the easterne hill,
Full envious that Night so long his roome did fill ;
When those accursed messengers of hell,
That feigning dreame, and that f aire- forged sprigbt
Came, &c. B. I. c. 2. st. i.
1): * «
At last, the golden oriental! gate
Of greatest Heaven gan to open fayre ;
And Phcebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate,
Came dauncing forth, shaking his deawie hayre ;
And hurld his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
Which when the wakeful Elfe perceiv'd, streightway
He started up, and did him selfe prepayre
In sunbright armes and battailous array ;
For with that Pagan proud he combat will that day.
lb. c. 5. st. 2.
Observe also the exceeding vividness of Spenser's de-
scriptions. They are not, in the true sense of the word,
picturesque ; but are composed of a wondrous series of
images, as in our dreams. Compare the following passage
with any thing you may remember in pari materia in Milton
or Shakspeare : —
His haughtie helmet, horrid all with gold.
Both glorious brightnesse and great terrour bredd ;
For all the crest a dragon did enfold
With greedie pawes, and over all did spredd
His golden winges ; his dreadfull hideous hedd.
Close couched on the bever, seemd to throw
From flaming mouth bright sparkles fiery redd,
That suddeine horrour to faint hartes did show ;
And scaly tayle was stretcht adowne his back full low.
Upon the top of all his loftie crest
A bounch of haires discolourd diversly.
With sprinkled pearle and gold full richly drest,
Did shake, and seemd to daunce for jollitie ;
Like to an almond tree ymounted hye
On top of greene Selinis all alone,
With blossoms brave bedecked daintily.
Whose tender locks do tremble every one
At everie little breath that under heaven is blowne.
lb. c. 7. st. 31-2.
4. You will take especial noce of the marvellous inde-
pendence and true imaginative absence of all particular
space or time in the Faery Queene. It is in the domains
neither of history or geography ; it is ignorant of all arti-
ficial boundary, all material obstacles ; it is truly in land of
234 Course of Lectures
Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you
in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have
the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there.
It reminds me of some lines of my own : —
Oh ! would to Alia !
The raven or the sea-mew were appointed
To bring me food ! — or rather that my soul
Might draw in life from the universal air !
It were a lot divine in some small skiff
Along some ocean's boundless solitude
To float for ever with a careless course
And think myself the only being alive !
Remorse, Act iv. sc. 3.
Indeed Spenser himself, in the conduct of his great poem,
may be represented under the same image, his symbolizing
purpose being his mariner's compass : —
As pilot well expert in perilous wave,
That to a stedfast starre his course hath bent,
When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have
The faithfull light of that faire lampe yblent.
And coverd Heaven with hideous dreriment ;
Upon his card and compas firmes his eye,
The maysters of his long experiment,
And to them does the steddy helme apply,
Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward fi}'-.
B. II. c. 7. St. I.
So the poet through the realms of allegory.
5. You should note the quintessential character of
Christian chivalry in all his characters, but more especially
in his women. The Greeks, except, perhaps, in Homer,
seem to have had no way of making their women interest-
ing, but by unsexing them, as in the instances of the tragic
Medea, Electra, &c. Contrast such characters with
Spenser's Una, who exhibits no prominent feature, has no
particularization, but produces the same feeling that a
statue does, when contemplated at a distance : —
From her fayre head her fillet she undight,
And layd her stole aside : her angels face,
As the great eye of Heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place ;
Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace.
B. 1. c. 3. St. 4.
6. In Spenser we see the brightest and purest form of
that nationality which was so common a characteristic of
Lecture III. 235
our elder poets. There is nothing unamiable, nothing con-
temptuous of others, in it. To glorify their country — to
elevate England into a queen, an empress of the heart —
this was their passion and object ; and how dear and im-
portant an object it was or may be, let Spain, in the
recollection of her Cid, declare ! There is a great magic in
national names. What a damper to all interest is a list of
native East Indian merchants ! Unknown names are
non-conductors ; they stop all sympathy. No one of our
poets has touched this string more exquisitely than Spenser;
especially in his chronicle of the British Kings (B. II. c.
10), and the marriage of the Thames with the Medway
(B. IV. c. 11), in both which passages the mere names con-
stitute half the pleasure we receive. To the same feeling
we must in particular attribute Spenser's sweet reference
to Ireland : —
Ne thence the Irishe rivers absent were ;
Sith no lesse famous than the rest they be, &c. lb.
* * * ■ *
And jNIulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.
lb.
And there is a beautiful passage of the same sort in the
Colin Clout's Come Home Again : —
" One day," quoth he, "I sat, as was my trade,
Under the foot of Mole," &c.
Lastly, the great and prevailing character of Spenser's
mind is fancy under the conditions of imagination, as an
ever present but not always active power. He has an
imaginative fancy, but he has not imagination, in kind or
degree, as Shakspeare and Milton have ; the boldest effort
of his powers in this way is the character of Talus. ^ Add
to this a feminine tenderness and almost maidenly purity
of feeling, and above aU, a deep moral earnestness which
produces a believing sympathy and acquiescence in the
reader, and you have a tolerably adequate view of Spenser's
intellectual being.
1 JB. 5. Legend of Artegall. Ea.
236 Course of Lectures
LECTURE VII.
Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger.
A CONTEMPORARY is rather an ambiguous term, when
applied to authors. It may simply mean that one man
lived and wrote while another was yet alive, however
deeply the former may have been indebted to the latter as
his model. There have been instances in the hterary world
that might remind a botanist of a singular sort of parasite
plant, which rises above ground, independent and un-
supported, an apparent original ; but trace its roots, and
you wiU find the fibres all terminating in the root of another
plant at an unsuspected distance, which, perhaps, from
want of sun and genial soil, and the loss of sap, has scarcely
been able to peep above the ground. — Or the word may
mean those whose compositions were contemporaneous in
such a sense as to preclude all hkelihood of the one having
borrowed from the other. In the latter sense I should call
Ben Jonson a contemporary of Shakspeare, though he long
survived him ; while I should prefer the phrase of im-
mediate successors for Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger, though they too were Shakspeare' s contem-
poraries in the former sense.
BEN JONSON.i
Born, 1574. — Died, 1637.
Ben Jonson is original ; he is, indeed, the only one of the
great dramatists of that day who was not either directly
produced, or very greatly modified, by Shakspeare. In
truth, he differs from our great master in every thing — in
form and in substance — and betrays no tokens of his
proximity. He is not original in the same way as Shak-
speare is original ; but after a fashion of his own, Ben
Jonson is most truly original.
The characters in his plays are, in the strictest sense of
the term, abstractions. Some very prominent feature is
1 From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
Lecture VII. 237
taken from the whole man, and that single feature or
humour is made the basis upon which the entire character
is built up. Ben Jonson's dramatis personcB are almost as
fixed as the masks of the ancient actors ; you know from
the first scene — sometimes from the list of names — exactly
what every one of them is to be. He was a very accurately
observing man ; but he cared only to observe what was
external or open to, and likely to impress, the senses. He
individualizes, not so much, if at all, by the exhibition of
moral or intellectual differences, as by the varieties and con-
trasts of manners, modes of speech and tricks of temper ;
as in such characters as Puntarvolo, Bobadill, &c.
I believe there is not one whim or affectation in common
life noted in any memoir of that age which may not be
found drawn and framed in some corner or other of Ben
Jonson's dramas ; and they have this merit, in common
with Hogarth's prints, that not a single circumstance is
introduced in them which does not play upon, and help to
bring out, the dominant humour or humours of the piece.
Indeed I ought very particularly to call your attention to
the extraordinary skill shown by Ben Jonson in contriving
situations for the display of his characters. ^ In fact, his
care and anxiety in this matter led him to do what scarcely
any of the dramatists of that age did — that is, invent his
plots. It is not a first perusal that suffices for the full per-
ception of the elaborate artifice of the plots of the Alchemist
and the Silent Woman ; — that of the former is absolute
perfection for a necessary entanglement, and an unexpected,
yet natural, evolution.
Ben Jonson exhibits a sterling English diction, and he
has with great skill contrived varieties of construction ;
but his style is rarely sweet or harmonious, in consequence
of his labour at point and strength being so evident. In
aU his works, in verse or prose, there is an extraordinary
opulence of thought ; but it is the produce of an amassing
power in the author, and not of a growth from within.
Indeed a large proportion of Ben Jonson's thoughts may be
traced to classic or obscure modern writers, by those who
are learned and curious enough to follow the steps of this
robust, surly, and observing dramatist.
1" In Jonson's comic inventious," says Schlegel, "a spirit of observation is mani-
fested more than fancy." Vol. 4, p. 93.
238 Course of Lectures
BEAUMONT. Born, 1586.1— Died, 1615-16.
FLETCHER. Bom, 1579.— Died, 1625.
Mr. Weber, to whose taste, industry, and appropriate
erudition, we owe, I will not say the best, (for that would
be saying little,) but a good, edition of Beaumont and
Fletcher, has complimented the Philaster, which he him-
self describes as inferior to the Maid's Tragedy by the
same writers, as but little below the noblest of Shak-
speare's plays, Lear, Macbeth, Othello, &c. and conse-
quently implying the equaUty, at least, of the Maid's
Tragedy ; — and an eminent Living critic, — who in the
manly wit, strong sterling sense, and robust style of his
original works, had presented the best possible credentials
of office, as charge d'affaires of literature in general, — and
who by his edition of Massinger — a work in which there
was more for an editor to do, and in which more was
actually well done, than in any similar work within my
knowledge — has proved an especial right of authority in
the appreciation of dramatic poetry, and hath potenti-
ally a double voice with the public in his own right and in
that of the critical synod, where, as princeps senatus, he
possesses it by his prerogative, — has affirmed that Shak-
speare's superiority to his contemporaries rests on his
superior wit alone, while in all the other, and, as I should
deem, higher excellencies of the drama, character, pathos,
depth of thought, &c. he is equalled by Beaumont and
Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Massinger ! ^
Of wit I am engaged to treat in another Lecture. It is
a genus of many species ; and at present I shall only say,
that the species which is predominant in Shakspeare, is so
completely Shakspearian, and in its essence so interwoven
with all his other characteristic excellencies, that I am
equally incapable of comprehending, both how it can be
detached from his other powers, and how, being disparate
in kind from the wit of contemporary dramatists, it can
be compared with theirs in degree. And again — the
1 Mr. Dyce thinks that " Beaumont's birth ought to be fixed at a somewhat earlier
date," because, in the Funeral Certificate on the decease of his father, dated 22nd
April, 1598, he is said to be 0/ tkz age of thirteen years or more ; and because " at the
age of twelve. 4th February, 1596-7," according to Woods Ath. Oxon, "he was
admitted a gentle.-nan-comnionrr of Broadgates Hall."
2 See Mr.^Gifford's introduction to his edition of Massinger. Ed.
Lecture VII. 239
detachment and the practicabiHty of the comparison
being granted — I should, I confess, be rather incUned to
concede the contrary ; — and in the most common species
of wit, and in the ordinary apphcation of the term, to
yield this particular palm to Beaumont and Fletcher,
whom here and hereafter I take as one poet with two
names, — leaving undivided what a rare love and still
rarer congeniality have united. At least, I have never
been able to distinguish the presence of Fletcher during
the life of Beaumont, nor the absence of Beaumont during
the survival of Fletcher.
But waiving, or rather deferring this question, I protest
against the remainder of the position m toto. And indeed,
whilst I can never, I trust, show myself blind to the various
merits of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger,
or insensible to the greatness of the merits which they
possess in common, or to the specific excellencies which
give to each of the three a worth of his own, — I confess,
that one main object of this Lecture was to prove that
Shakspeare's eminence is his own, and not that of his age ;
— even as the pine-apple, the melon, and the gourd may
grow on the same bed ; — yea, the same circumstances of
warmth and soil may be necessary to their full develop-
ment, yet do not account for the golden hue, the ambrosial
flavour, the perfect shape of the pine-apple, or the tufted
crown on its head. Would that those, who seek to twist
it off, could but promise us in this instance to make it the
germ of an equal successor !
What had a grammatical and logical consistency for
the ear, — what could be put together and represented to
the eye — these poets took from the ear and eye, unchecked
by any intuition of an inward impossibility ; — just as a
man might put together a quarter of an orange, a quarter
of an apple, and the like of a lemon and a pomegranate,
and made it look like one round diverse-coloured fruit.
But nature, which works from within by evolution and
assimilation according to a law, cannot do so, nor could
Shakspeare ; for he too worked in the spirit of nature, by
evolving the germ from within by the imaginative power
according to an idea. For as the power of seeing is to
light, so is an idea in mind to a law in nature. They are
correlatives, which suppose each other.
The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are mere aggrega-
240 Course of Lectures
tions without unity ; in the Shakspearian drama there is a
vitality which grows and evolves itself from within, — a
key-note which guides and controls the harmonies through-
out. What is Lear ? — It is storm and tempest — the
thunder at first grumbling in the far horizon, then gather-
ing around us, and at length bursting in fury over our
heads, — succeeded by a breaking of the clouds for a while,
a last flash of lightning, the closing in of night, and the
single hope of darkness ! And Romeo and Juliet ? — It is
a spring day, gusty and beautiful in the morn, and closing
like an April evening with the song of the nightingale ; ^
— whilst Macbeth is deep and earthy, — composed to the
subterranean music of a troubled conscience, which con-
verts ever}^ thing into the wild and fearful !
Doubtless from mere observation, or from the occasional
similarity of the writer's own character, more or less in
Beaumont and Fletcher, and other such writers, will happen
to be in correspondence with nature, and still more in
apparent compatibility with it. But yet the false source
is always discoverable, first by the gross contradictions to
nature in so many other parts, and secondly, by the want
of the impression which Shakspeare makes, that the thing
said not only might have been said, but that nothing else
could be substituted, so as to excite the same sense of its
exquisite propriety. I have always thought the conduct
and expressions of Othello and I ago in the last scene, when
lago is brought in prisoner, a wonderful instance of Shak-
speare's consummate judgment : —
0th. I look down towards his feet ; — but that's a fable.
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.
lago. I bleed, Sir ; but not kill'd.
0th. I am not sorry neither.
Think what a volley of execrations and defiances Beaumont
and Fletcher would have poured forth here !
Indeed Massinger and Ben Jonson are both more perfect
in their kind than Beaumont and Fletcher ; the former
in the story and affecting incidents ; the latter in the
exhibition of manners and peculiarities, whims in language,
and vanities of appearance.
There is, however, a diversity of the most dangerous
1 Was der Duft eines siidlichen Friihlings berauschendes, der Gesang der Nachtigall
sehasuchtiges, das erste Auf bluhung der Rose wollustiges hat, das athraet aus diesem
Gedicht. Schlegel's Dram. Vorlcsun^en, Vol. iii. p 107.
Lecture VII. 241
kind here. Shakspeare shaped his characters out ol the
nature within ; but we cannot so safely say, out of his own
nature as an individual person. No ! this latter is itself
but a natura naturata, — an effect, a product, not a power.
It was Shakspeare's prerogative to have the universal,
which is potentially in each particular, opened out to him,
the homo generalis, not as an abstraction from observation
of a variety of men, but as the substance capable of endless
modifications, of which his own personal existence was but
one, and to use this one as the eye that beheld the other,
and as the tongue that could convey the discovery. There
is no greater or more common vice in dramatic writers
than to draw out of themselves. How I — alone and in the
self sufficiency of my study, as all men are apt to be proud
in their dreams — should like to be talking king ! Shak-
speare, in composing, had no /, but the / representative.
In Beaumont and Fletcher you have descriptions of char-
acters by the poet rather than the characters themselves :
we are told, and impressively told, of their being ; but we
rarely or never feel that they actually are.
Beaumont and Fletcher are the most lyrical of our
dramatists, I think their comedies the best part of their
works, although there are scenes of very deep tragic
interest in some of their plays. I particularly recommend
Monsieur Thomas for good pure comic humour.
There is, occasionally, considerable license in their
dramas ; and this opens a subject much needing vindica-
tion and sound exposition, but which is beset with such
difficulties for a Lecturer, that I must pass it by. Only as
far as Shakspeare is concerned, I own, I can with less pain
admit a fault in him than beg an excuse for it. I will not,
therefore, attempt to palliate the grossness that actually
exists in his plays by the customs of his age, or by the far
greater coarseness of aU his contemporaries, excepting
Spenser, who is himself not wholly blameless, though
nearly so ; — for I place Shakspeare's merit on being of no
age. But I would clear away what is, in my judgment,
not his, as that scene of the Porter ^ in Macbeth, and many
other such passages, and abstract what is coarse in manners
only, and all that which from the frequency of our own
vices, we associate with his words. If this were truly done,
little that could be justly reprehensible would remain.
1 Act ii. sc. 3.
242 Course of Lectures
Compare the vile comments, offensive and defensive, on
Pope's
Lust thro' some gentle strainers, &c.
With the worst thing in Shakspeare, or even in Beaumont
and Fletcher ; and then consider how unfair the attack is
on our old dramatists ; especially because it is an attack
that cannot be properly answered in that presence in which
an answer would be most desirable, from the painful nature
of one part of the position ; but this very pain is almost a
demonstration of its falsehood !
MASSINGER.
Born at Salisbury, 1584. — Died, 1640.
With regard to Massinger, observe,
1. The vein of satire on the times ; but this is not as in
Shakspeare, where the natures evolve themselves accord-
ing to their incidental disproportions, from excess, de-
ficiency, or mislocation, of one or more of the component
elements ; but is merely satire on what is attributed to
them by others.
2. His excellent metre— a better model for dramatists in
general to imitate than Shakspeare's, — even if a dramatic
taste existed in the frequenters of the stage, and could be
gratified in the present size and management, or rather
mismanagement, of the two patent theatres. I do not
mean that Massinger's verse is superior to Shakspeare's or
equal to it. Far from it ; but it is much more easily con-
structed, and may be more successfully adopted by writers
in the present day. It is the nearest approach to the
language of real life at all compatible with a fixed metre.
In Massinger, as in all our poets before Dryden, in order to
make harmonious verse in the reading, it is absolutely
necessary that the meaning should be understood ; — when
the meaning is once seen, then the harmony is perfect.
Whereas in Pope, and in most of the writers who followed in
his school, it is the mechanical metre which determines the
sense.
3. The impropriety, and indecorum of demeanour in his
favourite characters, as in Bertoldo in the Maid of Honour,
Lecture VII. 243
who is a swaggerer, talking to his sovereign what no
sovereign could endure, and to gentlemen what no gentle-
men would answer without pulling his nose.
4. Shakspeare's Ague-cheek, Osric, &c. are displayed
through others, in the course of social intercourse, by the
mode of their performing some office in which they are
employed ; but Massinger's Sylli come forward to declare
themselves fools ab arbitrium auctoris, and so the diction
always needs the subintelUgitur {'the man looks as if he
thought so and so,') expressed in the language of the
satirist, and not in that of the man himself : —
Sylli. You may, madam,
Perhaps, believe that I in this use art
To make you dote upon me, by exposing
My more than most rare features to your view ;
But I, as I have ever done, deal simply,
A mark of sweet simplicity, ever noted
In the family of the Syllis. Therefore, lady,
Look not with too much contemplation on me ;
If you do, you are in the suds.
Maid of Honour, Act i. sc. 2.
The author mixes his own feelings and judgments concern-
ing the presumed fool ; but the man himself, till mad, fights
up against them, and betrays, by his attempts to modify
them, that he is no fool at all, but one gifted with activity
and copiousness of thought, image and expression, which
belong not to a fool, but to a man of wit making himself
merry with his own character.
5. There is an utter want of preparation in the decisive
acts of Massinger's characters, as in Camiola and Aurelia
in the Maid of Honour. Why ? Because the dramatis
personcB were all planned each by itself. Whereas in
Shakspeare, the play is syngenesia ; each character has,
indeed, a life of its own, and is an individuum of itself, but
yet an organ of the whole, as the heart in the human body.
Shakspeare was a great comparative anatomist.
Hence Massinger and all, indeed, but Shakspeare, take
a dislike to their own characters, and spite themselves upon
them by making them talk like fools or monsters ; as
Fulgentio in his visit to Camiola, (Act ii. sc. 2.). Hence too,
in Massinger, the continued flings at kings, courtiers, and
all the favourites of fortune, like one who had enough of
intellect to see injustice in his own inferiority in the share
of the good things of life, but not genius enough to rise
244 Course of Lectures
above it, and forget himself. Beaumont and Fletcher have
the same vice in the opposite pole, a servility of sentiment
and a spirit of partizanship with the monarchical faction.
6. From the want of a guiding point in Massinger's
characters, you never know what they are about. In fact
they have no character.
7. Note the faultiness of his soliloquies, with connectives
and arrangements that have no other motive but the fear
lest the audience should not understand him.
8. A play of Massinger's produces no one single effect,
whether arising from the spirit of the whole, as in the As
You Like It ; or from any one indisputably prominent
character, as Hamlet. It is just " which you like best,
gentlemen ! "
9. The unnaturally irrational passions and strange whims
of feeling which Massinger delights to draw, deprive the
reader of all sound interest in the characters ; — as in
Mathias in the Picture, and in other instances.
10. The comic scenes in Massinger not only do not
harmonize with the tragic, not only interrupt the feeling,
but degrade the characters that are to form any part in the
action of the piece, so as to render them unfit for any tragic
interest. At least, they do not concern, or act upon, or
modify, the principal characters. As when a gentleman
is insulted by a mere blackguard, — it is the same as if any
other accident of nature had occurred, a pig run under his
legs, or his horse thrown him. There is no dramatic interest
in it.
I like Massinger's comedies better than his tragedies,
although where the situation requires it, he often rises into
the truly tragic and pathetic. He excels in narration, and
for the most part displays his mere story with skill. But
he is not a poet of high imagination ; he is like a Flemish
painter, in whose delineations objects appear as they do in
nature, have the same force and truth, and produce the
same effect upon the spectator. But Shakspeare is beyond
this ; he always by metaphors and figures involves in the
thing considered a universe of past and possible experiences ;
he mingles earth, sea and air, gives a soul to every thing,
and at the same time that he inspires human feelings, adds
a dignity in his images to human nature itself : —
Full raany a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye ;
Lecture VII. 245
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy, &c.
33rd Sonnet.
Notes on Massinger.
Have I not over-rated Gifford's edition of Massinger ? — •
Not, — if I have, as but just is, main reference to the re-
stitution of the text ; but yes, perhaps, if I were talking of
the notes. These are more often wrong than right. In
the Maid of Honour, Act i. sc. 5. Astutio describes Fulgentio
as " A gentleman, yet no lord." Gifford supposes a trans-
position of the press for " No gentleman, yet a lord." But
this would have no connection with what follows ; and we
have only to recollect that " lord " means a lord of lands,
to see that the after hues are explanatory. He is a man of
high birth, but no landed property ; — as to the former, he
is a distant branch of the blood royal ; — as to the latter, his
whole rent lies in a narrow compass, the king's ear ! In the
same scene the text stands :
Bert. No ! they are useful
For your imitation ; — I remember
you, &c.
and Gifford condemns Mason's conjecture of * initiation* as
void of meaning and harmony. Now my ear deceives me
if 'initiation' be not the right word. In fact, 'imitation' is
utterly impertinent to aU that follows. Bertoldo tells
Antonio that he had been initiated in the manners suited to
the court by two or three sacred beauties, and that a
similar experience would be equally useful for his initiation
into the camp. Not a word of his imitation. Besides, I
say the rhythm requires 'initiation,' and is lame as the
verse now stands.
1 Two or three tales, each in itself independent of the
others, and united only by making the persons that are
the agents in the story the relations of those in the other,
as when a bind-weed or thread is twined round a bunch of
flowers, each having its own root — and this novel narrative
in dialogue — such is the character of Massinger' s plays —
That the juxta-position and the tying together by a
common thread, which goes round this and round that,
1 The notes on Massinger which follow were transcribed from a copy of that
dramatist's works, belonging to Mr. Gillman. I do not know whence the first was
taken by the original editor.
246 Course of Lectures
and then round them all, twine and intertwine, are con-
trived ingeniously — that the component tales are well
chosen, and the whole well and conspicuously told ; so as
to excite and sustain the mind by kindling and keeping
alive the curiosity of the reader — that the language is
most pure, equally free from bookishness and from vulgar-
ism, from the pecuharities of the School, and the tran-
siencies of fashion, whether fine or coarse ; that the
rhythm and metre are incomparably good, and form the
very model of dramatic versification, flexible and seeming
to rise out of the passions, so that whenever a line sounds
immetrical, the speaker may be certain he has recited it
amiss, either that he has misplaced or misproportioned
the emphasis, or neglected the acceleration or retardation
of the voice in the pauses (all which the mood or passion
would have produced in the real Agent, and therefore
demand from the Actor or {^muii^'toT}) and that read aright
the blank verse is not less smooth than varied, a rich
harmony, puzzling the fingers, but satisfying the ear —
these are Massinger's characteristic merits.
Among the varieties of blank verse Massinger is fond
of the anapaest in the first and third foot, as :
" To yoiir more | than ma | sciihne rea | son
that I commands 'em || -" ^
The Guardian, Act i. sc. 2.
Likewise of the second Paeon (u - uu) in the first foot
followed by four trochees (- u) as :
" So greedily | long for, | know their |
titill I ations." lb. ib.
The emphasis too has a decided influence on the metre,
and, contrary to the metres of the Greek and Roman
classics, at lestst to all their more common sorts of verse,
as the hexameter and hex and pentameter, Alchaic,
Sapphic, &c. hcLS an essential agency on the character of
the feet and power of the verse. One instance only of this
I recollect in Theocritus :
TO firi KoXa /fdXd xiipavrdi,
I Giflford divides the lines in question thus :
" Command my sensual appetites.
C.alip. As vassals to
Your more than masculine reason, that commands them."
But it is obviously better to make the first line end with " vassals," so as to give it only
the one over-running syllable, which is so common in the last foot.
Lecture VIII. 247
unless Homer's ' A-p^g, "Apeg, may (as I believe) be deemed
another — For I cannot bring my ear to believe that
Homer would have perpetrated such a cacophony as
"flpsg, 'Apsg.
" In fear | my chaasteetee | may be | sus-
pected." I lb. ib.
In short, musical notes are required to explain Massinger
— metres in addition to prosody. When a speech is
interrupted, or one of the characters speaks aside, the last
syllable of the former speech and first of the succeeding
Massinger counts but for one, because both are supposed
to be spoken at the same moment.
** And felt the sweetness oft."
" How her mouth runs over."
Ib. ib.
Emphasis itself is twofold, the rap and the drawl, or the
emphasis by quality of sound, and that by quantitj^ — the
hammer, and the spatula — the latter over 2, 3, 4 syllables
or even a whole line. It is in this that the actors and
speakers are generally speaking defective, they cannot
equilibrate an emphasis, or spread it over a number of
syllables, aU emphasized, sometimes equally, sometimes
unequally.
LECTURE VIII.
Don Quixote.
CERVANTES.
Born at Madrid, 1547 ; — Shakspeare, 1564 ; both put off
mortality on the same day, the 23rd of April, 1616, — the
one in the sixty-ninth, the other in the fifty-second, year
of his life. The resemblance in their physiognomies is
striking, but with a predominance of acuteness in Cervantes,
and of reflection in Shakspeare, which is the specific
difference between the Spanish and English characters of
mind.
I. The nature and eminence of Symbolical writing ; —
II. Madness, and its different sorts, (considered with-
out pretension to medical science) ; —
248 Course of Lectures
To each of these, or at least to my own notions respecting
them, I must devote a few words of explanation, in order
to render the after critique on Don Quixote, the master
work of Cervantes' and his country's genius, easily and
throughout intelligible. This is not the least valuable,
though it may most often be felt by us both as the heaviest
and least entertaining portion of these critical disquisi-
tions : for without it, I must have foregone one at least
of the two appropriate objects of a Lecture, that of interest-
ing you during its delivery, and of leaving behind in your
minds the germs of after-thought, and the materials for
future enjoyment. To have been assured by several of
my intelligent auditors that they have reperused Hamlet
or Othello with increased satisfaction in consequence of
the new points of view in which I had placed those char-
acters— is the highest compliment I could receive or
desire ; and should the address of this evening open out
a new source of pleasure, or enlarge the former in j^our
perusal of Don Quixote, it will compensate for the failure
of any personal or temporary object.
L The Symbolical cannot, perhaps, be better defined
in distinction from the Allegorical, than that it is always
itself a part of that, of the whole of which it is the repre-
sentative.— " Here comes a sail," — (that is, a ship) is a
symbolical expression. " Behold our lion ! " when we
speak of some gallant soldier, is allegorical. Of most ^
importance to our present subject is this point, that the
latter (the allegory) cannot be other than spoken con-
sciously ; — whereas in the former (the symbol) it is very
possible that the general truth represented may be working
unconsciously in the writer's mind during the construction
of the symbol ; — and it proves itself by being produced
out of his own mind, — as the Don Quixote out of the
perfectly sane mind of Cervantes ; and not by outward
observation, or historically. The advantage of symbohcal
writing over allegory is, that it presumes no disjunction
of faculties, but simple predominance.
II. Madness may be divided as —
1. hypochondriasis ; or, the man is out of his senses.
2. derangement of the understanding ; or, the man
is out of his wits.
3. loss of reason.
4. frenzy, or derangement of the sensations.
Lecture VIII. 249
Cervantes's own preface to Don Quixote is a perfect
model of the gentle, every where intelligible, irony in the
best essays of the Tatler and the Spectator. Equally
natural and easy, Cervantes is more spirited than Addison ;
whilst he blends with the terseness of Swift, an exquisite
flow and music of style, and above all, contrasts with the
latter by the sweet temper of a superior mind, which saw
the follies of mankind, and was even at the moment
suffering severely under hard mistreatment ; ^ and yet
seems every where to have but one thought as the under-
song— " Brethren ! with all your faults I love you still ! "
— or as a mother that chides the child she loves, with one
hand holds up the rod, and with the other wipes off each
tear as it drops !
Don Quixote was neither fettered to the earth by want,
nor holden in its embraces by wealth ; — of which, with
the temperance natural to his country, as a Spaniard, he
had both far too little, and somewhat too much, to be
under any necessity of thinking about it. His age too,
fifty, may be well supposed to prevent his mind from being
tempted out of itself by any of the lower passions ; — while
his habits, as a very early riser and a keen sportsman,
were such as kept his spare body in serviceable subjection
to his will, and yet by the play of hope that accompanies
pursuit, not only permitted, but assisted, his fancy in
shaping what it would. Nor must we omit his meagre-
ness and entire featureliness, face and frame, which
Cervantes gives us at once : " It is said that his surname
was Quixada or Quesada," &c. — even in this trifle showing
an exquisite judgment ; — just once insinuating the associa-
tion of lantern-jaws into the reader's mind, yet not retaining
it obtrusively like the names in old farces and in the
Pilgrim's Progress, — but taking for the regular appellative
one which had the no meaning of a proper name in real life,
and which yet was capable of recalling a number of very
different, but all pertinent, recollections, cLS old armour,
the precious metals hidden in the ore, &c. Don Quixote's
leanness and featureliness are happy exponents of the
excess of the formative or imaginative in him, contrasted
1 Bien coitw quicn se eng-cndrd en una carcel, cionde toda incomodidcul tiene su
assicnto, y todo triste ntido hace su hahitacion. Like one you may suppose born in a
prison, where every inconvenience keeps its residence, and every dismal sound its
habitation. Pref. Jarvis's Tr. Ed.
250 Course of Lectures
with Sancho's plump rotundity, and recipiency of external
impression.
He has no knowledge of the sciences or scientific arts
which give to the meanest portions of matter an intel-
lectual interest, and which enable the mind to decypher in
the world of the senses the invisible agency — that alone, of
which the world's phenomena are the effects and mani-
festations,— and thus, as in a mirror, to contemplate its
own reflex, its Hfe in the powers, its imagination in the
symbolic forms, its moral instincts in the final causes, and
its reason in the laws of material nature : but — estranged
from all the motives to observation from self-interest — the
persons that surround him too few and too familiar to enter
into any connection with his thoughts, or to require any
adaptation of his conduct to their particular characters or
relations to himself — his judgment lies fallow, with nothing
to excite, nothing to employ it. Yet, — and here is the
point, where genius even of the most perfect kind, allotted
but to few in the course of many ages, does not preclude the
necessity in part, and in part counterbalance the craving by
sanity of judgment, without which genius either cannot be,
or cannot at least manifest itself, — the dependency of our
nature asks for some confirmation from without, though it
be only from the shadows of other men's fictions.
Too uninformed, and with too narrow a sphere of pov/er
and opportunity to rise into the scientific artist, or to be
himself a patron of art, and with too deep a principle and
too much innocence to become a mere projector, Don
Quixote has recourse to romances : —
His curiosity and extravagant fondness herein arrived at that
pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of
knis:ht-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on of that
kind ! C. I.
The more remote these romances were from the language
of common life, the more akin on that very account were
they to the shapeless dreams and strivings of his own mind ;
— a mind, which possessed not the highest order of genius
which lives in an atmosphere of power over mankind, but
that minor kind which, in its restlessness, seeks for a vivid
representative of its own wishes, and substitutes the move-
ments of that objective puppet for an exercise of actual
power in and by itself. The more wild and improbable
Lecture VIII. 251
these romances were, the more were they akin to his will,
which had been in the habit of acting as an unlimited
monarch over the creations of his fancy ! Hence observe
how the startling of the remaining common sense, like a
glimmering before its death, in the notice of the impossible-
improbable of Don Belianis, is dismissed by Don Quixote
as impertinent —
He had some doubt ^ as to the dreadful wounds which Don Belianis
gave and received : for he imagined, that notwithstanding the
most expert surgeons had cured him, his face and whole body must
still be full of seams and scars. Nevertheless ^ he commended in
his author the concluding his book with a promise of that un-
finishable adventure ! C. i.
Hence also his first intention to turn author ; but who,
with such a restless struggle \vithin him, would content
himself with writing in a remote village among apathists
and ignorants ? During his colloquies with the village
priest and the barber surgeon, in which the fervour of
critical controversy feeds the passion and gives reality to
its object — what more natural than that the mental striving
should become an eddy ? — madness may perhaps be defined
as the circling in a stream which should be progressive and
adaptive ; Don Quixote grows at length to be a man out
of his wits ; his understanding is deranged ; and hence
without the least deviation from the truth of nature, with-
out losing the least trait of personal individuality, he
becomes a substantial hving allegory, or personification of
the reason and the moral sense, divested of the judgment
and the understanding. Sancho is the converse. He is
the common sense without reason or imagination ; and
Cervantes not only shows the excellence and power of
reason in Don Quixote, but in both him and Sancho the
mischiefs resulting from a severance of the two main con-
stituents of sound intellectual and moral action. Put him
and his master together, and they form a perfect intellect ;
but they are separated and without cement ; and hence
each having a need of the other for its own completeness,
each has at times a mastery over the other. For the
common sense, although it may see the practical in-
applicability of the dictates of the imagination or abstract
reason, yet cannot help submitting to them. These two
characters possess the world, alternately and interchange-
1 No estaha muy bien con. Ed. 2 Pero con todo. Ed.
252 Course of Lectures
ably the cheater and the cheated. To impersonate them,
and to combine the permanent with the individual, is one
of the highest creations of genius, and has been achieved
by Cervantes and Shakspeare, almost alone.
Observations on particular passages:
B. I. c. I. But not altogether approving of his having broken it
to pieces with so much ease, to secure himself from the like danger
for the future, he made it over again, fencing it with small bars of
iron within, in such a manner, that he rested satisfied of its strength ;
and without caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and
looked upon it as a most excellent helmet.
His not trying his improved scull-cap is an exquisite trait
of human character, founded on the oppugnancy of the
soul in such a state to any disturbance by doubt of its own
broodings. Even the long deliberation about his horse's
name is full of meaning ; — for in these day-dreams the
greater part of the history passes and is carried on in words,
which look forward to other words as what will be said of
them.
lb. Near the place where he lived, there dwelt a very comely
country lass, with whom he had formerly been in love ; though, as
it is supposed, she never knew it, nor troubled herself about it.
The nascent love for the country lass, but without any
attempt at utterance, or an opportunity of knowing her,
except as the hint — the on Un — of the inward imagination,
is happily conceived in both parts ; — first, as confirmative
of the shrinking back of the mind on itself, and its dread of
having a cherished image destroyed by its own judgment ;
and secondly, as showing how necessarily love is the passion
of novels. Novels are to love as fairy tales to dreams. I
never knew but two men of taste and feeling who could not
understand why I was delighted with the Arabian Nights'
Tales, and they were likewise the only persons in my know-
ledge who scarcely remembered having ever dreamed.
Magic and war — itself a magic — are the day-dreams of
childhood ; love is the day-dream of youth, and early
manhood.
C. 2. " Scarcely had ruddy Phoebus spread the golden tresses
of his beauteous hair over the face of the wide and spacious eai-th ;
and scarcely had the little painted birds, with the sweet and melli-
Lecture VIII. 253
fluous harmony of their forked tongues, saluted the approach of
rosy Aurora, who, quitting the soft couch of her jealous husband,
disclosed herself to mortals through the gates of the Mauchegan
horizon ; when the renowned Don Quixote," &c.
How happily already is the abstraction from the senses,
from observation, and the consequent confusion of the
judgment, marked in this description ! The knight is
describing objects immediate to his senses and sensations
without borrowing a single trait from either. Would it be
difficult to find parallel descriptions in Dry den's plays and
in those of his successors ?
C. 3. The host is here happily conceived as one who from
his past life as a sharper, was capable of entering into and
humouring the knight, and so perfectly in character, that
he precludes a considerable source of improbabihty in the
future narrative, by enforcing upon Don Quixote the
necessity of taking money with him.
C. 3. " Ho, there, whoever thou art, rash knight, that ap-
proachest to touch the arms of the most valorous adventurer that
ever girded sword," &c.
Don Quixote's high eulogiums on himself — " the most
valorous adventurer ! " — but it is not himself that he has
before him, but the idol of his imagination, the imaginary
being whom he is acting. And this, that it is entirely a
third person, excuses his heart from the otherwise inevit-
able charge of selfish vanity ; and so by madness itself he
preserves our esteem, and renders those actions natural by
which he, the first person, deserves it.
C. 4. Andres and his master.
The manner in which Don Quixote redressed this wrong,
is a picture of the true revolutionary passion in its first
honest state, while it is yet only a bewilderment of the
understanding. You have a benevolence limitless in its
prayers, which are in fact aspirations towards omnipotence ;
but between it and beneficence, the bridge of judgment —
that is, of measurement of personal power — intervenes,
and must be passed. Otherwise you will be bruised by the
leap into the chasm, or be drowned in the revolutionary
river, and drag others with you to the same fate.
C. 4. Merchants of Toledo.
When they were come so near as to be seen and heard, Don
Quixote raised his voice, and with arrogant air cried out : " Let
254 Course of Lectures
the whole world stand ; if the whole world does not confess that
there is not in the whole world a damsel more beautiful than," &c.
Now mark the presumption which follows the self-com-
placency of the last act ! That was an honest attempt to
redress a real wrong ; this is an arbitrary determination to
enforce a Brissotine or Rousseau's idesd on all his fellow
creatures.
Let the whole world stand !
*If there had been any experience in proof of the excellence
of our code, where would be our superiority in this en-
lightened age ?'
" No ? the business is that without seeing her, you believe,
confess, affirm, swear, and maintain it ; and if not, I challenge you
all to battle." ^
Next see the persecution and fury excited by opposition
however moderate ! The only words hstened to are those,
that without their context and their conditionals, and trans-
formed into positive assertions, might give some shadow of
excuse for the violence showm ! This rich story ends, to
the compassion of the men in their senses, in a sound rib-
roasting of the idealist by the muleteer, the mob. And
happy for thee, poor knight ! that the mob were against
thee ! For had they been with thee, by the change of the
moon and of them, thy head would have been off.
C. 5, first part. The idealist recollects the causes that
had been necessary to the reverse and attempts to remove
them — too late. He is beaten and disgraced.
C. 6. This chapter on Don Quixote's library proves that
the author did not wish to destroy the romances, but to
cause them to be read as romances — that is, for their merits
as poetry.
C. 7. Among other things, Don Quixote told him, he should
dispose himself to go with him "wnllingly ; — for some time or other
such an adventure might present, that an island might be won, in
the turn of a hand, and he be left governor thereof.
At length the promises of the imaginative reason begin to
act on the plump, sensual, honest common sense accomplice,
— but unhappily not in the same person, and without the
copula of the judgment, — in hopes of the substantial good
1 Donde no, Mnmigo sois en battalia., gente descomunal! Ed.
Lecture VIII. 255
things, of which the former contemplated only the glory and
the colours.
C. 7. Sancho Panza went riding upon his ass, like any patriarch,
with his wallet and leathern bottle, and with a vehement desire to
find himself governor of the island which his master had promised
him.
The first relief from regular labour is so pleasant to poor
Sancho !
C. 8. " I no gentleman ! I swear by the great God. thou liest,
as I am a Christian. Biscainer by land, gentleman by sea, gentle-
man for the devil, and thou liest : look then if thou hast any thing
else to say."
This Biscainer is an excellent image of the prejudices and
bigotry provoked by the idealism of a speculator. This
story happily detects the trick which our imagination plays
in the description of single combats : only change the pre-
conception of the magnificence of the combatants, and all
is gone.
B. II. c. 2. " Be pleased, my lord Don Quixote, to bestow upon
me the government of that island," &c.
Sancho' s eagerness for his government, the nascent lust
of actual democracy, or isocracy !
C. 2. " But tell me, on your life, have you ever seen a more
valorous knight than I, upon the whole face of the known earth ?
Have you read in story of any other, who has, or ever had, more
bravery in assailing, more breath in holding out, more dexterity in
wounding, or more address in giving a fall ? " — " The truth is,"
answered Sancho, " that I never read any history at all ; for I can
neither read nor write ; but what I dare affirm is, that I never
served a bolder master," &c.
This appeal to Sancho, and Sancho's answer are ex-
quisitely humorous. It is impossible not to think of the
French bulletins and proclamations. Remark the necessity
under which we are of being sympathized with, fly as high
into abstraction as we may, and how constantly the
imagination is recalled to the ground of our common
humanity ! And note a little further on, the knight's easy
vaunting of his balsam, and his quietly deferring the mak-
ing and application of it.
C. 3. The speech before the goatherds :
" Happy times and happy ages," &c.*
I Dichosa cdad y siglos dichoses aquellos, &'c. Ed.
256
Course of Lectures
Note the rhythm of this, and the admirable beauty and
wisdom of the thoughts in themselves, but the total want
of judgment in Don Quixote's addressing them to such an
audience.
B. III. c. 3. Don Quixote's balsam, and the vomiting and
consequent relief ; an excellent hit at panacea nostrums,
which cure the patient by his being himself cured of the
medicine by revolting nature.
C. 4. " Peace ! and have patience ; the day will come," &c.
The perpetual promises of the imagination !
lb. " Your Worship," said Sancho, " would make a better
preacher than knight errant ! "
Exactly so. This is the true moral.
C. 6. The uncommon beauty of the description in the
commencement of this chapter. In truth, the whole of it
seems to put all nature in its heights, and its humiliations,
before us.
lb. Sancho's story of the goats :
" Make account, he carried them all over," said Don Quixote,
** and do not be going and coming in this manner ; for at this rate,
you will not have done carrying them over in a twelvemonth."
*' How many are passed already ? " said Sancho, &c.
Observe the happy contrast between the all-generalizing
mind of the mad knight, and Sancho's all-particularizing
memory. How admirable a symbol of the dependence of
all copula on the higher powers of the mind, with the single
exception of the succession in time and the accidental
relations of space. Men of mere common sense have no
theory or means of making one fact more important or
prominent than the rest ; if they lose one link, all is
lost. Compare Mrs. Quickly and the Tapster.^ And
note also Sancho's good heart, when his master is about
to leave him. Don Quixote's conduct upon discovering
the fulling-hammers, proves he was meant to be in his
senses. Nothing can be better conceived than his fit of
passion at Sancho's laughing, and his sophism of self-
justification by the courage he had shown.
Sancho is by this time cured, through experience, as far
as his own errors are concerned ; yet still is he lured on by
1 See the Friend, vol. iii. p. 138. £<i.
Lecture VIII. 257
the unconquerable awe of his master's superiority, even
when he is cheating him.
C. 8. The adventure of the Galley-slaves. I think this
is the only passage of moment in which Cervantes slips the
mask of his hero, and speaks for himself.
C. 9. Don Quixote desired to have it, and bade him take the
money, and keep it for himself. Sancho kissed his hands for the
favour, &c.
Observe Sancho' s eagerness to avail himself of the per-
mission of his master, who, in the war sports of knight-
errantry, had, without any selfish dishonesty, overlooked
the meiim and tumn. Sancho's selfishness is modified by
his involuntary goodness of heart, and Don Quixote's
flighty goodness is debased by the involuntary or un-
conscious selfishness of his vanity and self-applause.
C. 10. Cardenio is the madman of passion, who meets
and easily overthrows for the moment the madman of
imagination. And note the contagion of madness of any
kind, upon Don Quixote's interruption of Cardenio's story.
C. II. Perhaps the best specimen of Sancho's pro-
verbializing is this :
" And I (Don Q.) sa}'' again, they He, and will lie two hundred
times more, all who say, or think her so." " I neither say, nor
think so," answered Sancho ; " let those who say it, eat the lie,
and swallow it with their bread : whether they were guilty or no,
they have given an account to God before now : I come from my
vineyard, I know nothing ; I am no friend to inquiring into other
men's lives ; for he that buys and lies shall find the lie left in his
purse behind ; besides, naked was I born, and naked I remain ; I
neither win nor lose ; if they were guilty, what is that to me ?
Many think to find bacon, where there is not so much as a pin to
hang it on : bul who can hedge in the cuckoo ? Especially, do
they spare God himself ? "
lb. " And it is no great matter, if it be in another hand ; for
by what I remember, Dulcinea can neither write nor read," &c.
The wonderful twilight of the mind ! and mark Cer-
vantes's courage in daring to present it, and trust to a
distant posterity for an appreciation of its truth to nature.
P. II. B. III. c. 9. Sancho's account of what he had seen
on Clavileno is a counterpart in his style to Don Quixote's
adventures in the cave of Montesinos. This last is the only
impeachment of the knight's moral character ; Cervantes
just gives one instance of the veracity failing before the
strong cravings of the imagination for something real and
I
258 Course of Lectures
external ; the picture would not have been complete with-
out this ; and yet it is so well managed, that the reader has
no unpleasant sense of Don Quixote having told a lie. It
is evident that he hardly knows whether it was a dream or
not ; and goes to the enchanter to inquire the real nature of
the adventure.
Summary of Cervantes.
A Castilian of refined manners ; a gentleman, true to
religion, and true to honour.
A scholar and a soldier, and fought under the banners of
Don John of Austria, at Lepanto, lost his arm and was
captured.
Endured slavery not only with fortitude, but with mirth ;
and by the superiority of nature, mastered and overawed
his barbarian owner.
Finally ransomed, he resumed his native destiny, the
awful task of achieving fame ; and for that reason died
poor and a prisoner, while nobles and kings over their
goblets of gold gave relish to their pleasures by the charms
of his divine genius. He was the inventor of novels for
the Spaniards, and in his Persilis and Sigismunda, the
English may find the germ of their Robinson Crusoe.
The world was a drama to him. His own thoughts, in
spite of poverty and sickness, perpetuated for him the
feelings of youth. He painted only what he knew and had
looked into, but he knew and had looked into much indeed ;
and his imagination was ever at hand to adapt and modify
the world of his experience. Of delicious love he fabled,
yet with stainless virtue.
LECTURE IX.
On the Distinctions of the Witty, the Droll, the Odd, and the
Humourous ; the Nature and Constituents of Humour :
— Rabelais — Swift — Sterne.
I.
Perhaps the most important of our intellectual operations
are those of detecting the difference in similar, and the
identity in dissimilar, things. Out of the latter operation
Lecture IX. 259
it is that wit arises ; and it, generically regarded, consists
in presenting thoughts or images in an unusual connection
with each other, for the purpose of exciting pleasure by
the surprise. This connection may be real ; and there is
in fact a scientific wit ; though where the object, con-
sciously entertained, is truth, and not amusement, we
commonly give it some higher name. But in wit popularly
understood, the connection may be, and for the most part
is, apparent only, and transitory ; and this connection
may be by thoughts, or by words, or by images. The first
is our Butler's especial eminence ; the second, Voltaire's ;
the third, which we oftener call fancy, constitutes the
larger and more peculiar part of the wit of Shakspeare.
You can scarcely turn to a single speech of Falstaff's
without finding instances of it. Nor does wit always
cease to deserve the name by being transient, or incapable
of analysis. I may add that the wit of thoughts belongs
eminently to the Italians, that of words to the French,
and that of images to the English.
II. Where the laughable is its own end, and neither
inference, nor moral is intended, or where at least the
writer would wish it so to appear, there arises what we
call droUery. The pure, unmixed, ludicrous or laughable
belongs exclusively to the understanding, and must be
presented under the form of the senses ; it lies within the
spheres of the eye and the ear, and hence is allied to the
fancy. It does not appertain to the reason or the moral
sense, and accordingly is alien to the imagination. I think
Aristotle has already excellently defined ^ the laughable,
ro yiXom, as consisting of, or depending on, what is out
of its proper time and place, yet without danger or pain.
Here the impropriety — rh aroirov — is the positive qualifi-
cation ; the danger lessness — rh dx/vduvov — the negative.
Neither the understanding without an object of the
senses, as for example, a mere notional error, or idiocy ;
— nor any external object, unless attributed to the under-
1 He elsewhere commends this Def. : "To resolve laughter into an expression of
contempt is contrary to fact, and laughable enough. Laughter is a convulsion of the
nerves, and it seems as if nature cut short the rapid thrill of pleasure on the nerves by
a sudden convulsion of them to prevent the sensation becoming painful — ArnstotU's
Def. is as good as can be. Surprise at perceiving anything out of its usual place when
the unusualness is not accompanied by a sense of serious danger. Such surprise is
always pleasurable, and it is observable that surprise accompanied with circumstances
of danger becomes Tragic. Hence Farce may often borcUr on Tragedy; indeed
Farce is nearer Tragedy in its Essence than Comedy is. "
Table Talk.
26o Course of Lectures
standing, can produce the poetically laughable. Nay,
even in ridiculous positions of the body laughed at by the
vulgar, there is a subtle personification always going on,
which acts on the, perhaps, unconscious mind of the
spectator as a symbol of intellectual character. And hence
arises the imperfect and awkward effect of comic stories of
animals ; because although the understanding is satisfied
in them, the senses are not. Hence too, it is, that the true
ludicrous is its own end. When serious satire commences,
or satire that is felt as serious, however comically drest,
free and genuine laughter ceases ; it becomes sardonic.
This you experience in reading Young, and also not un-
frequently in Butler. The true comic is the blossom of
the nettle.
III. When words or images are placed in unusual juxta-
position rather than connection, and are so placed merely
because the juxta-position is unusual — we have the odd or
the grotesque ; the occasional use of which in the minor
ornaments of architecture, is an interesting problem for a
student in the psychology of the Fine Arts.
IV. In the simply laughable there is a mere dispropor-
tion between a definite act and a definite purpose or end,
or a disproportion of the end itself to the rank or circum-
stances of the definite person ; but humour is of more
difficult description. I must try to define it in the first
place by its points of diversity from the former species.
Humour does not, like the different kinds of wit, which is
impersonal, consist wholly in the understanding and the
senses. No combination of thoughts, words, or images
wiU of itself constitute humour, unless some peculiarity of
individual temperament and character be indicated there-
by, as the cause of the same. Compare the comedies of
Congreve with the Falstaff in Henry IV. or with Sterne's
Corporal Trim, Uncle Toby, and Mr. Shandy, or with
some of Steele's charming papers in the Tatler, and you
will feel the difference better than I can express it. Thus
again (to take an instance from the different works of the
same writer), in SmoUett's Strap, his Lieutenant Bowling,
his Morgan the honest Welshman, and his Matthew
Bramble, we have exquisite humour, — while in his Pere-
grine Pickle we find an abundance of drollery, which too
often degenerates into mere oddity ; in short, we feel that
a number of things are put together to counterfeit humour.
Lecture IX. 261
but that there is no growth from within. And this indeed
is the origin of the word, derived from the humoral patho-
logy, and excellently described by Ben Jonson :
So in every human body,
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of humours. Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition :
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers.
In their confluctions, all to run one way.
This may be truly said to be a humour.^
Hence we may explain the congeniality of humour with
pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also
the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate
with, the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First, we
respect a humourist, because absence of interested motive is
the groundwork of the character, although the imagination
of an interest may exist in the individual himself, as if a
remarkably simple-hearted man should pride himself on his
knowledge of the world, and how well he can manage it :
— and secondly, there always is in a genuine humour an
acknowledgment of the hoUowness and farce of the world,
and its disproportion to the godlike within us. And it
follows immediately from this, that whenever particular
acts have reference to particular selfish motives, the
humourous bursts into the indignant and abhorring ;
whilst all follies not selfish are pardoned or palliated.
The danger of this habit, in respect of pure morality, is
strongly exemplified in Sterne.
This would be enough, and indeed less than this has
passed, for a sufficient account of humour, if we did not
recollect that not every predominance of character, even
where not precluded by the moral sense, as in criminal
dispositions, constitutes what we mean by a humourist,
or the presentation of its produce, humour. What then
is it ? Is it manifold ? Or is there some one humorific
point common to all that can be called humorous ? — I
am not prepared to answer this fully, even if my time
permitted ; but I think there is ; — and that it consists in
1 Every Man Out Of His Humour. Prologue.
262 Course of Lectures
a certain reference to the general and the universal, by
which the finite great is brought into identity with the
little, or the little with the finite great, so as to make both
nothing in comparison with the infinite. The little is
made great, and the great little, in order to destroy both ;
because all is equal in contrast with the infinite. " It is
not without reason, brother Toby, that learned men write
dialogues on long noses." ^ I would suggest, therefore,
that whenever a finite is contemplated in reference to the
infinite, whether consciously or unconsciously, humour
essentially arises. In the highest humour, at least, there
is always a reference to, and a connection with, some
general power not finite, in the form of some finite ridicu-
lously disproportionate in our feelings to that of which it
is, nevertheless, the representative, or by which it is to be
displayed. Humorous writers, therefore, as Sterne in
particular, dehght, after much preparation, to end in
nothing, or in a direct contradiction.
That there is some truth in this definition, or origina-
tion of humour, is evident ; for you cannot conceive a
humorous man who does not give some disproportionate
generahty, or even a universality to his hobby-horse, as is
the case with Mr. Shandy ; or at least there is an absence
of any interest but what arises from the humour itself, as
in my Uncle Toby, and it is the idea of the soul, of its un-
defined capacity and dignity, that gives the sting to any
absorption of it by any one pursuit, and this not in respect
of the humourist as a mere member of society for a par-
ticular, however mistaken, interest, but as a man.
The English humour is the most thoughtful, the Spanish
the most etherial — the most ideal — of modern literature.
Amongst the classic ancients there was Httle or no humour
in the foregoing sense of the term. Socrates, or Plato under
his name, gives some notion of humour in the Banquet,
when he argues that tragedy and comedy rest upon the
same ground. But humour properly took its rise in the
middle ages ; and the Devil, the Vice of the mysteries,
incorporates the modem humour in its elements. It is
a spirit measured by disproportionate finites. The Devil
is not, indeed, perfectly humorous ; but that is only be-
cause he is the extreme of all humour,
1 Trist. Sh. Vol. iii. c. w.
Lecture IX. 263
RABELAIS.i
Bom at Chinon, 1483-4. — Died 1553.
One cannot help regretting that no friend of Rabelais,
(and surely friends he must have had), has left an authentic
account of him. His buffoonery was not merely Brutus'
rough stick, which contained a rod of gold ; it was
necessary as an amulet against the monks and bigots.
Beyond a doubt, he was among the deepest as well as
boldest thinkers of his age. Never was a more plausible,
and seldom, I am persuaded, a less appropriate line than
the thousand times quoted,
Rabelais laughing in his easy chair —
of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and zanyism
proves how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which
he stood. I could write a treatise in proof and praise of the
morality and moral elevation of Rabelais* work which
would make the church stare, and the conventicle groan,
and yet should be the truth and nothing but the truth. I
class Rabelais with the creative minds of the world, Shak-
speare, Dante, Cervantes, &c.
All Rabelais' personages are phantasmagoric allegories,
but Panurge above all. He is throughout the -ravou^/Za, —
the wisdom, that is, the cunning of the human animal, —
the understanding, cls the faculty of means to purposes
without ultimate ends, in a most comprehensive sense, and
including art, sensuous fancy, and all the passions of the
understanding. It is impossible to read Rabelais without
an admiration mixed with wonder at the depth and extent
of his learning, his multifarious knowledge, and original
observation beyond what books could in that age have
supplied him with.
B. III. c. 9. How Panurge asketh counsel of Pantagruel,
whether he should marry, yea or no.
Note this incomparable chapter. Pantagruel stands for
the reason as contradistinguished from the understanding
1 No note remains of that part of this Lecture which treated of Rabelais. This
seems, therefore, a convenient place for the reception of some remarks written by Mr.
C. in Mr. Gillman's copy of Rabelais, about the year 1825. See Table Talk, vol. i. p.
177. Ed.
264 Course of Lectures
and choice, that is, from Panurge ; and the humour con-
sists in the latter asking advice of the former on a subject
in which the reason can only give the inevitable conclusion,
the syllogistic ergo, from the premisses pro\'ided by the
understanding itself, which puts each case so as of necessity
to predetermine the verdict thereon. This chapter, in-
dependently of the allegory, is an exquisite satire on the
spirit in which people commonly ask advice.
SWIFT.i
Bom in Dublin, 1667. — Died 1745.
In Swift's writings there is a false misanthropy grounded
upon an exclusive contemplation of the vices and follies of
mankind, and this misanthropic tone is also disfigured or
brutalized by his obtrusion of physical dirt and coarseness.
I think Gulliver's Travels the great work of Swift. In the
voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag he displays the little-
ness and moral contemptibility of human nature ; in that
to the Houyhnhnms he represents the disgusting spectacle
of man with the understanding only, without the reason or
the moral feeling, and in his horse he gives the misanthropic
ideal of man — that is, a being virtuous from rule and duty,
but untouched by the principle of love.
STERNE.
Born at Clonmel, 1713. — Died 1768.
With regard to Sterne, and the charge of licentiousness
which presses so seriously upon his character as a writer,
I would remark that there is a sort of knowingness, the wit
of which depends — ist, on the modesty it gives pain to ;
or, 2dly, on the innocence and innocent ignorance over
which it triumphs ; or, 3dly, on a certain oscillation in the
individual's own mind between the remaining good and the
encroaching evil of his nature — a sort of dallying with the
devil — afiuxionaryact of combining courage and cowardice,
as when a man snuffs a candle with his fingers for the first
1 From Mr. Green's note. Ed.
Lecture IX. 265
time, or better still, perhaps, like that trembling daring
with which a child touches a hot tea urn, because it has
been forbidden ; so that the mind has in its own white and
black angel the same or similar amusement, as may be
supposed to take place between an old debauchee and a
prude, — she feeling resentment, on the one hand, from
a prudential anxiety to preserve appearances and have a
character, and, on the other, an inward sympathy with the
enemy. We have only to suppose society innocent, and
then nine-tenths of this sort of wit would be like a stone
that falls in snow, making no sound because exciting no
resistance ; the remainder rests on its being an offence
against the good manners of human nature itself.
This source, unworthy as it is, may doubtless be com-
bined with wit, drollery, fancy, and even humour, and we
have only to regret the misalliance ; but that the latter are
quite distinct from the former, may be made evident by
abstracting in our imagination the morality of the char-
acters of Mr. Shandy, my Uncle Toby, and Trim, which
are all antagonists to this spurious sort of wit, from the
rest of Tristram Shandy. And by supposing, instead of
them, the presence of two or three callous debauchees.
The result will be pure disgust. Sterne cannot be too
severely censured for thus using the best dispositions of
our nature as the panders and condiments for the basest.
The excellencies of Sterne consist —
I. In bringing forward into distinct consciousness those
minutiae of thought and feeling which appear trifles, yet
have an importance for the moment, and which almost
every man feels in one way or other. Thus is produced the
novelty of an individual peculiarity, together with the
interest of a something that belongs to our common nature.
In short, Sterne seizes happily on those points, in which
every man is more or less a humourist. And, indeed, to
be a little more subtle, the propensity to notice these things
does itself constitute the humourist, and the superadded
power of so presenting them to men in general gives us the
man of humour. Hence the difference of the man of
humour, the effect of whose portraits does not depend on
the felt presence of himself, as a humourist, as in the in-
stances of Cervantes and Shakspeare — nay, of Rabelais too ;
and of the humourist, the effect of whose works does very
much depend on the sense of his own oddity, as in Sterne's
266 Course of Lectures
case, and perhaps Swift's ; though Swift again would
require a separate classification.
2. In the traits of human nature, which so easily assume
a particular cast and colour from individual character.
Hence this excellence and the pathos connected with it
quickly pass into humour, and form the ground of it. See
particularly the beautiful passage, so well known, of Uncle
Toby's catching and liberating the fly :
" Go," — says he, one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which
had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-
time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as
it flew by him ; — " I'll not hurt thee," says my Uncle Toby, rising
from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand,
— " I'll not hurt a hair of thy head : — " Go," says he, lifting up the
sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape ; — " go,
poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee ? This world is
surely wide enough to hold both thee and me." Vol. ii. ch. 12.
Observe in this incident how individual character may be
given by the mere delicacy of presentation and elevation
in degree of a common good quality, humanity, which in
itself would not be characteristic at all.
3. In Mr. Shandy's character, — the essence of which is
a craving for sympathy in exact proportion to the oddity
and unsympathizability of what he proposes ; — this
coupled with an instinctive desire to be at least disputed
with, or rather both in one, to dispute and yet to agree —
and holding as worst of all — to acquiesce without either
resistance or sjmipathy. This is charmingly, indeed, pro-
foundly conceived, and is psychologically and ethically
true of all Mr. Shandies. Note, too, how the contrasts of
character, which are always either balanced or remedied,
increase the love between the brothers.
4. No writer is so happy as Sterne in the unexaggerated
and truly natural representation of that species of slander,
which consists in gossiping about our neighbours, as whet-
stones of our moral discrimination ; as if they were
conscience-blocks which we used in our apprenticeship,
in order not to waste such precious materials as our own
consciences in the trimming and shaping of ourselves by
self-examination : —
Alas o'day ! — had Mrs. Shandy, (poor gentlewoman !) had but
her wish in going up to town just to lie in and come down again ;
Lecture IX. 267
which, they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare knees,
and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr.
Shandy got with her, was no such mighty matter to have complied
with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at
this hour. Vol. i. c. i8.
5. When you have secured a man's Hkings and pre-
judices in your favour, you may then safely appeal to his
impartial judgment. In the following passage not only
is acute sense shrouded in wit, but a life and a character
are added which exalt the whole into the dramatic : —
" I see plainly. Sir, by your looks " (or as the case happened) my
father would say — " that you do not heartily subscribe to this
opinion of mine — which, to those," he would add, " who have not
carefully sifted it to the bottom, — I own has an air more of fancy
than of solid reasoning in it ; and yet, my dear Sir, if I may pre-
sume to know your character, I am morally assured I should
hazard little in stating a case to you, not as a party in the dispute,
but as a judge, and trusting my appeal upon it to your good sense
and candid disquisition in this matter ; you are a persoA free from
as many narrow prejudices of education as most men ; and, if I may
presume to penetrate farther into you, of a liberality of genius
above bearing down an opinion, merely because it wants friends.
Your son, — your dear son, — from whose sweet and open temper
you have so much to expect, — your Billy, Sir ! — would you,
for the world, have called him Judas ? Would you, my dear
Sir," he would say, laying his hand upon your breast, with the
genteelest address, — and in that soft and irresistible piano of voice,
which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely re-
quires,— " Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed
the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it,
would you have consented to such a desecration of him ? O my
God ! " he would say, looking up, " if I know your temper rightly.
Sir, you are incapable of it ; — you would have trampled upon the
offer ; — you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's
head with abhorrence. Your greatness of mind in this action,
which I admire, with that generous contempt of money, which
you show me in the whole transaction, is really noble ; — and what
renders it more so, is the principle of it ; — the workings of a parent's
love upon the truth and conviction of this very hypothesis, namely,
that were your son called Judas, — the sordid and treacherous idea,
so inseparable from the name, would have accompanied him through
life like his shadow, and in the end made a miser and a rascal of
him, in spite. Sir, of your example." Vol. i. c. 19.
6. There is great physiognomic tact in Sterne. See it
particularly displayed in his description of Dr. Slop,
accompanied with all that happiest use of drapery and
attitude, which at once give reality by individualizing and
vividness by unusual, yet probable, combinations : —
Imagine to yourself a little squat uncourtly figure of a Doctor
268 Course of Lectures
Slop, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a
breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have
done honour to a serjeant in the horseguards.
« * K * *
Imagine such a one ; — for such, I say, were the outlines of Doctor
Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling through
the dirt upon the vertebrce of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty
colour — but of strength, — alack ! scarce able to have made an
amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling
condition ; — they were not. Imagine to yourself Obadiah mounted
upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop,
and making all practicable speed the adverse way. Vol. ii. c. 9.
7. I think there is more humour in the single remark,
which I have quoted before — " Learned men, brother
Toby, don't write dialogues upon long noses for nothing ! "
— than in the whole Slawkenburghian tale that follows,
which is mere oddity interspersed with drollery. ^
8. Note Sterne's assertion of, and faith in a moral good
in the characters of Trim, Toby, &c. as contrasted with the
cold scepticism of motives which is the stamp of the
Jacobin spirit. Vol. v. c. 9.
9. You must bear in mind, in order to do justice to
Rabelais and Sterne, that by right of humoristic univer-
sality each part is essentially a whole in itself. Hence the
digressive spirit is not mere wantonness, but in fact the
very form and vehicle of their genius. The connection,
such as was needed, is given by the continuity of the
characters.
Instances of different forms of wit, taken largely :
1. " Why are you reading romances at your age ? " — " Why, 1
used to be fond of history, but I have given it up, — it was so grossly
improbable."
2. " Pray, sir, do it ! — although you have promised me."
3. The Spartan's mother —
" Return with, or on, thy shield."
" My sword is too short ! " — " Take a step forwarder."
4. The Gasconade : —
" I believe you, Sir ! but you will excuse my repeating it on
account of my provincial accent."
5. Pasquil on Pope Urban, who had employed a com-
mittee to rip up the old errors of his predecessors.
Some one placed a pair of spurs on the heels of the
Lecture X. 269
statue of St. Peter, and a label from the opposite statue
of St. Paul, on the same bridge ; —
St. Paul. " Whither then are you bound ? "
Si. Peter. " I apprehend danger here ; — they'll soon call me in
question for denying my Master."
St. Paul. " Nay, then, I had better be off too ; for they'll question
me for having persecuted the Christians, before my conversion."
6. Speaking of the small German potentates, I dictated
the phrase, — officious for equivalents. This my amanu-
ensis wrote, — fishing for elephants ; — which, as I observed
at the time, was a sort of Noah's angling, that could
hardly have occurred, except at the commencement of the
Deluge.
LECTURE X.
Donne — Dante — Milton — Paradise Lost.
DONNE.i
Born in London, 1573. — Died, 1631.
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots ;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.
II.
See lewdness and theology combin'd, —
A cynic and a sycophantic mind ;
A fancy shar'd party per pale between
Death's heads and skeletons, and Aretine ! —
Not his peculiar defect or crime,
But the true current mintage of the time.
Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given
To mark a loyal churchman, sound and even.
Free from papistic and fanatic leaven.
The wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, the wit of Pope, the
wit of Congreve, the wit of Sheridan — how many disparate
things are here expressed by one and the same word. Wit !
1 Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lecture. Here, therefore, as
in previous like instances, the gap is filled up with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge
in a volume of Chalmers' Poets, belonging to Mr. Gillman. The verses were added in
270 Course of Lectures
— Wonder-exciting vigour, intenseness and peculiarity of
thought, using at will the almost boundless stores of a
capacious memory, and exercised on subjects, where we
have no right to expect it — this is the wit of Donne ! The
four others I am just in the mood to describe and inter-
distinguish ; — what a pity that the marginal space will
not let me !
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two fitter hemispheres
Without sharp north, without decHning west ?
Good -Morrow, v. 15, &c.
The sense is ; — Our mutual loves may in many respects
be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres ; but as
no simile squares [nihil simile est idem), so here the simile
fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to
the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemi-
spheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of
such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge
of nonsense or a bull. January, 1829.
Woman's constancy.
A misnomer. The title ought to be —
Mutual Inconstancy.
WTiether both th' Indias of spice and mine, &c.
Sun Rising, v. 17.
And see at night thy western land of mine, &c.
Progress of the Soul, i Song, 2. st.
This use of the word mim specifically for mines of gold,
silver, or precious stones, is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.
DANTE.
Bom at Florence, 1265. — Died, 1321.
As I remarked in a former Lecture on a different subject
(for subjects the most diverse in literature have still their
tangents), the Gothic character, and its good and evil
fruits, appeared less in Italy than in any other part of
European Christendom. There was accordingly much less
romance, as that word is commonly understood ; or,
pencil to the collection of commendatory lines ; No. I. is Mr. C.'s ; the publication of
No. II. I trust the all-accomplished author will, under the circumstances, pardon.
Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr. Coleridge on Donne's Sermons are in exktence,
and will be published hereafter. EtJ.
Lecture X. 271
perhaps, more truly stated, there was romance instead of
chivalry. In Italy, an earlier imitation of, and a more
evident and intentional blending with, the Latin hterature
took place than elsewhere. The operation of the feudal
system, too, was incalculably weaker, of that singular
chain of independent interdependents, the principle of
which was a confederacy for the preservation of individual,
consistently with general, freedom. In short, Italy, in the
time of Dante, was an after-birth of eldest Greece, a
renewal or a reflex of the old Italy under its kings and first
Roman consuls, a net-work of free little republics, with
the same domestic feuds, civil wars, and party spirit, —
the same vices and virtues produced on a similarly narrow
theatre, — the existing state of things being, as in all small
democracies, under the working and direction of certain
individuals, to whose will even the laws were swayed ; —
whilst at the same time the singular spectacle was ex-
hibited amidst aU this confusion of the flourishing of
commerce, and the protection and encouragement of
letters and arts. Never was the commercial spirit so well
reconciled to the nobler principles of social pohty as in
Florence. It tended there to union and permanence and
elevation, — not as the overbalance of it in England is now
doing, to dislocation, change and moral degradation.
The intensest patriotism reigned in these communities,
but confined and attached exclusively to the small locality
of the patriot's birth and residence ; whereas in the true
Gothic feudalism, country was nothing but the preserva-
tion of personal independence. But then, on the other
hand, as a counterbalance to these disuniting elements,
there was in Dante's Italy, as in Greece, a much greater
uniformity of religion common to all than amongst the
northern nations.
Upon these hints the history of the repubhcan seras of
ancient Greece and modern Italy ought to be written.
There are three kinds or stages of historic narrative ; —
I. that of the annalist or chronicler, who deals merely in
facts and events arranged in order of time, having no prin-
ciple of selection, no plan of arrangement, and whose work
properly constitutes a supplement to the poetical writings
of romance or heroic legends : — 2. that of the writer who
takes his stand on some moral point, and selects a series of
events for the express purpose of illustrating it, and in
272 Course of Lectures
whose hands the narrative of the selected events is modified
by the principle of selection ; — as Thucydides, whose object
was to describe the evils of democratic and aristocratic
partizanships ; — or Polybius, whose design was to show the
social benefits resulting from the triumph and grandeur of
Rome, in public institutions and military discipline ; — or
Tacitus, whose secret aim was to exhibit the pressure and
corruptions of despotism ; — in all which writers and others
hke them, the ground-object of the historian colours with
artificial lights the facts which he relates : — 3. and which in
idea is the grandest — the most truly founded in philosophy
— there is the Herodotean history, which is not composed
with reference to any particular causes, but attempts to
describe human nature itself on a great scale as a portion of
the drama of providence, the free will of man resisting the
destiny of events, — for the individuals often succeeding
against it, but for the race always yielding to it, and in the
resistance itself invariably affording means towards the
completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's history is a
good and useful work ; but in his zeal against democratic
government, Mitford forgot, or never saw, that ancient
Greece was not, nor ought ever to be considered, a per-
manent thing, but that it existed, in the disposition of pro-
vidence, as a proclaimer of ideal truths, and that everlast-
ing proclamation being made, that its functions were
naturally at an end.
However, in the height of such a state of society in Italy,
Dante was born and flourished ; and was himself eminently
a picture of the age in which he lived. But of more im-
portance even than this, to a right understanding of Dante,
is the consideration that the scholastic philosophy was
then at its acme even in itself ; but more especially in Italy,
where it never prevailed so exclusively as northward of
the Alps. It is impossible to understand the genius of
Dante, and difficult to understand his poem, without some
knowledge of the characters, studies, and writings of the
schoolmen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth
centuries. For Dante was the living link between religion
and philosophy ; he philosophized the religion and chris-
tianized the philosophy of Italy ; and, in this poetic union
of religion and philosophy, he became the ground of tran-
sition into the mixed Platonism and Aristotelianism of the
Schools, under which, by numerous minute articles of faith
Lecture X. 273
and ceremony, Christianity became a craft of hair-splitting,
and was ultimately degraded into a complete fetisch
worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of a faith
without thought, and a credulity directed by passion.
Afterwards, indeed, philosophy revived under condition of
defending this very superstition ; and, in so doing, it
necessarily led the way to its subversion, and that in exact
proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools.
Hence it did its work most completely in Germany, then in
England, next in France, then in Spain, least of all in Italy.
We must, therefore, take the poetry of Dante as chris-
tianized, but without the further Gothic accession of proper
chivalry. It was at a somewhat later period, that the
importations from the East, through the Venetian com-
merce and the crusading armaments, exercised a pecu-
liarly strong influence on Italy.
In studying Dante, therefore, we must consider carefully
the differences produced, first, by allegory being sub-
stituted for polytheism ; and secondly and mainly, by the
opposition of Christianity to the spirit of pagan Greece,
which receiving the very names of its gods from Egypt,
soon deprived them of all that was universal. The Greeks
changed the ideas into finites, and these finites into anthro-
pomorphi, or forms of men. Hence their religion, their
poetry, nay, their very pictures, became statuesque. With
them the form was the end. The reverse of this was the
natural effect of Christianity ; in which finites, even the
human form, must, in order to satisfy the mind, be brought
into connexion with, and be in fact s3mibolical of, the
infinite ; and must be considered in some enduring, how-
ever shadowy and indistinct, point of view, as the vehicle
or representative of moral truth.
Hence resulted two great effects ; a combination of
poetry with doctrine, and, by turning the mind inward on
its own essence instead of letting it act only on its outward
circumstances and communities, a combination of poetry
with sentiment. And it is this inwardness or subjectivity,
which principally and most fundamentally distinguishes all
the classic from all the modern poetry. Compare the
passage in the Iliad (Z". vi. 119 — 236) in which Diomed and
Glaucus change arms, —
Xe?pds t' aSXrjKtJiv Xa^iTrjv Kal inaTwcavTO —
They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship —
274 Course of Lectures
with the scene in Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, c. i. st. 20-22),
where Rinaldo and Ferrauto fight and afterwards make it
up : —
Al Pagan la proposta non dispiacque :
Cosl fu difierita la tenzone ;
E tal tregua tra lor subito nacque,
81 r odio e 1' ira va in oblivione,
Che '1 Pagano al partir dalle fresche acque
Non lascio a piede il buon figliuol d' Amone ;
Con preghi invita, e al tin lo toglie in groppa,
E per r orme d' Angelica galoppa.
Here Homer would have left it. But the Christian poet
has his own feelings to express, and goes on : —
Oh gran bonta de' cavalieri antiqui I
Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi,
E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui
Per tutta la persona anco dolersi ;
E pur per selve oscure e calli obbliqui
Insieme van senza sospetto aversi !
And here you will observe, that the reaction of Ariosto's
own feelings on the image or act is more fore-grounded (to
use a painter's phrase) than the image or act itself.
The two different modes in which the imagination is
acted on by the ancient and modern poetry, may be illus-
trated by the parallel effects caused by the contemplation
of the Greek or Roman-Greek architecture, compared with
the Gothic. In the Pantheon, the whole is perceived in a
perceived harmony with the parts which compose it ; and
generally you will remember that where the parts preserve
any distinct individuality, there simple beauty, or beauty
simply, arises ; but where the parts melt undistinguished
into the whole, there majestic beaut}^ or majesty, is the
result. In York Minster, the parts, the grotesques, are in
themselves very sharply distinct and separate, and this
distinction and separation of the parts is counterbalanced
only by the multitude and variety of those parts, by which
the attention is bewildered ; — whilst the whole, or that
there is a whole produced, is altogether a feeling in which
the several thousand distinct impressions lose themselves
as in a universal solvent. Hence in a Gothic cathedral, as
in a prospect from a mountain's top, there is, indeed, a
unity, an awful oneness ; — but it is, because all distinction
Lecture X. 275
evades the eye. And just such is the distinction between,
the Antigone of Sophocles and the Hamlet of Shakspeare.^
The Divina Commedia is a system of moral, political,
and theological truths, with arbitrary personal exempli-
fications, which are not, in my opinion, allegorical. I do not
even feel convinced that the punishments in the Inferno are
strictly allegorical. I rather take them to have been in
Dante's mind quasi-a.]le§oncal, or conceived in analogy to
pure allegory.
I have said, that a combination of poetry with doctrines,
is one of the characteristics of the Christian muse ; but I
think Dante has not succeeded in effecting this combination
nearly so well as Milton.
This comparative failure of Dante, as also some other
peculiarities of his mind, in malam partem, must be im-
mediately attributed to the state of North Italy in his time,
which is vividly represented in Dante's life; a state of
intense democratical partizanship, in which an exaggerated
importance was attached to individuals, and which whilst it
afforded a vast field for the intellect, opened also a bound-
less arena for the passions, and in which envy, jealousy,
hatred, and other malignant feelings could and did as-
sume the form of patriotism, even to the individual's
own conscience.
All this common, and, as it were, natural partizanship,
was aggravated and coloured by the Guelf and GhibeUine
factions ; and, in part explanation of Dante's adherence
to the latter, you must particularly remark, that the Pope
had recently territorialized his authority to a great extent,
and that this increase of territorial power in the church,
was by no means the same beneficial movement for the
citizens of free republics, as the parallel advance in other
countries was for those who groaned as vassals under the
oppression of the circumjacent baronial castles. ^
By way of preparation to a satisfactory perusal of the
Divina Commedia, I will now proceed to state what I
consider to be Dante's chief excellences as a poet. And I
begin with
I. Style — the vividness, logical connexion, strength
and energy of which cannot be surpassed. In this I think
1 See Lect. I. p. 218, and note: and compere with Schlegel's Dram. VorUsung.
Essay on Shakspeare, p. 12.
2 Mr. Coleridge here notes : " I will, If I can, here make an hbtorical movement, and
pay a proper compliment, tu Mr. f^Iallam." Ed.
276 Course of Lectures
Dante superior to Milton ; and his style is accordingly
more imitable than Milton's, and does to this day exercise
a greater influence on the literature of his count^3^ You
cannot read Dante without feeling a gush of manliness of
thought within j^ou. Dante was very sensible of his own
excellence in this particular, and speaks of poets as
guardians of the vast armory of language, which is the
intermediate something between matter and spirit : —
Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte,
Che spande di parlar si largo fiume ?
Risposi lui con vergognosa fronte.
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami '1 lungo studio e '1 grande amore,
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
Tu se' lo mio maestro, e '1 mio autore :
Tu se' solo colui, da cii' to tolsi
Lo hello stile, che m' ha fatto onore.
Inf. c. I. V. 79.
" And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued ? " I, with front abash'd, replied :
" Glory and light of all the tuneful train !
May it avail me, that I long with zeal
Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
Have conn'd it o'er. My master, thou, and guide I
Thou he from whom I have alone derived
That style, ivhich for its beauty into fame
Exalts me," Gary.
Indeed there was a passion and a miracle of words in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the long slumber
of language in barbarism, which gave an almost romantic
character, a virtuous quality and power, to what was read
in a book, independently of the thoughts or images con-
tained in it. This feeling is very often perceptible in
Dante.
II. The Images in Dante are not only taken from
obvious nature, and are all intelligible to all, but are ever
conjoined with the universal feeling received from nature,
and therefore affect the general feelings of all men. And
in this respect, Dante's excellence is very great, and may
be contrasted with the idiosyncracies of some meritorious
modern poets, who attempt an eruditeness, the result of
particular feelings. Consider the simplicity, I may say
plainness, of the following simile, and how differently we
should in all probability deal with it at the present day :
Lecture X. 277
Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che '1 sol gl' imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo, —
Fal mi fee' io di mia virtute stanca :
Inf. c. 2. V. 127.
As florets, by the frosty air of night
Bent down and clos'd, when day has blanch'd their leaves.
Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems, —
So was my fainting vigour new restor'd.
Cary.^
III. Consider the wonderful profoundness of the whole
third canto of the Inferno ; and especially of the inscription
over Hell gate :
Per me si va, &c. —
which can only be explained by a meditation on the true
nature of religion ; that is, — reason plus the understand-
ing. I say profoundness rather than sublimity ; for
Dante does not so much elevate your thoughts as send
them down deeper. In this canto all the images are
distinct, and even vividly distinct ; but there is a total
impression of infinity ; the wholeness is not in vision or
conception, but in an inner feeling of totality, and absolute
being.
IV. In picturesqueness, Dante is beyond all other poets,
modern, or ancient, and more in the stern style of Pindar,
than of any other. Michael Angelo is said to have made
a design for every page of the Divina Commedia. As
superexcellent in this respect, I would note the conclusion
of the third canto of the Inferno :
Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave
Un vecchio bianco per antico pelo
Gridaudo : guai a voi anime prave : &c.
Ycx. S2. &c.
******
And lo ! toward us in a bark
Comes on an old man, hoary white with eld.
Crying, " Woe to you, wicked spirits ! "
******
Cary.
Caron dimonio con occhi di bragia
Loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie :
Batte col remo qualunque s' adagia.
Come d' autunno si levan le foglie
1 Mr. Coleridge here notes : " Here to speak of Mr. Gary's translation. —Ed,
278 Course of Lectures
L' una appresso dell' altra, infin che '1 ramo
Rende alia terra tutte le sue spoglie ;
Similemente il mal seme d' Adamo,
Gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una
Per cenni, com' augel per suo richiamo.
Ver. roo, &c.
Charon, demoniac form.
With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
Beck'ning, and each that lingers, with his oar
Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
One still another following, till the bough
Strews all its honours on the earth beneath ; —
E'en in like manner Adam's evil brood
Cast themselves one by one down from the shore
Each at a beck, as falcon at his call. Cary.
And this passage, which I think admirably picturesque
Ma poco valse, che 1' ale al sospetto
Non potero avanzar : quegli ando sotto.
E quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto :
Non altrimenti 1' anitra di botto,
Quando '1 falcon s' appressa, giu s' attuffa,
Ed ei ritoma su crucciato e rotto.
Irato Calcabrina della buffa,
Volando dietro gli tenne, invaghito,
Che quei campasse, per aver la zuffa :
E come '1 barattier fu disparito,
Cosi volse gli artigli al suo compagno,
E fu con lui sovra '1 fosso ghermito.
Ma r altro fu bene sparvier grifagno
Ad artigliar ben lui, e amedue
Cadder nel mezzo del bollente stagno.
Lo caldo sghermidor subito fue :
Ma pero di levarsi era niente.
Si aveano inviscate 1' ale sue.
Infer, c. xxii. ver. 127, &c.
But little it avail'd : terror outstripp'd
His following flight : the other plung'd beneath.
And he with upward pinion rais'd his breast :
E'en thus the water-fowl, when she perceives
The falcon near, dives instant down, while he
Enrag'd and spent retires. That mockery
In Calcabrina fury stirr'd, who flew
After him, with desire of strife inflam'd ;
And, for the barterer had 'scap'd, so tum'd
His talons on his comrade. O'er the dyke
In grapple close they join'd ; but th' other prov'd
A goshawk, able to rend well his foe ;
And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat
Was umpire soon between them, but in vain
lo lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued
Their pennons. Cary,
Lecture X. 279
V. Very closely connected with this picturesqueness,
is the topographic reaUty of Dante's journey through Hell.
You should note and dwell on this as one of his great
charms, and which gives a striking peculiarity to his poetic
power. He thus takes the thousand delusive forms of a
nature worse than chaos, having no reality but from the
passions which they excite, and compels them into the
service of the permanent. Observe the exceeding truth
of these lines :
Noi ricidemmo '1 cerchio all' altra riva,
Sovr' una fonte che bolle, e riversa,
Per un fossato che da lei diriva.
L' acqua era buja molto piu che persa :
E noi in compagnia dell' onde bige
Entrammo giu per una via diversa,
Una palude fa, ch' ha nome Stige,
Questo tristo ruscel, quando e disceso
Al pie delle maligne piagge grige.
Ed io che di mirar mi stava inteso, —
Vidi genti fangose in quel pantano
Ignude tutte, e con sembiante offeso.
Questi si percotean non pur con mano.
Ma con la testa, e col petto, e co' piedi,
Troncandosi co' denti a brano a brano.
» * * « * «
Cosl girammo della lorda pozza
Grand' arco tra la ripa secca e '1 mezzo,
Con gli occhi volti a chi del fango ingozza :
Venimmo appie d' una torre al dassezzo.
C. vii. ver. lOO and 127,
We the circle cross' d
To the next steep, arriving at a well.
That boiling pours itself down to a foss
Sluic'd from its source. Far murkier was the wave
Than sablest grain : and we in company
Of th' inky waters, journeying by their side,
Enter'd, though by a different track, beneath.
Into a lake, the Stygian nam'd, expands
The dismal stream, when it hath reach'd the foot
Of the grey wither'd cliffs. Intent I stood
To gaze, and in the marsh sunk, descried
A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks
Betok'ning rage. They with their hands alone
Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,
Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.
Our route
Thus compass'd, we a segment widely stretch'd
Between the dry embankment and the cove
28o Course of Lectures
Of the loath' d pool, turning meanwhile our eyes
Downward on those who gulp'd its muddy lees ;
Nor stopp'd, till to a tower's low base we came.
Gary.
VI. For Dante's power, — his absolute mastery over,
although rare exhibition of, the pathetic, I can do no
more than refer to the passages on Francesca di Rimini
(Infer. C. v. ver. 73 to the end) and on Ugolino, (Infer. C.
xxxiii. ver. i to 75.) They are so well known, and rightly
so admired, that it would be pedantry to analyze their
composition ; but you will note that the first is the pathos
of passion, the second that of affection ; and yet even in
the first, you seem to perceive that the lovers have sacrificed
their passion to the cherishing of a deep and rememberable
impression.
VII. As to going into the endless subtle beauties of
Dante, that is impossible ; but I cannot help citing the
first triplet of the 29th canto of the Inferno :
La molta gente e le diverse piaghe
Avean le luci mie si inebriate,
Che dello stare a piangere eran vaghe.
So were mine eyes inebriate with the view
Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds
Disfigur'd, that they long'd to stay and weep.
Cary.
Nor have I now room for any specific comparison of Dante
with Milton. But if I had, I would institute it upon the
ground of the last canto of the Inferno from the ist to the
69th line, and from the io6th to the end. And in this
comparison I should notice Dante's occasional fault of
becoming grotesque from being too graphic without
imagination ; as in his Lucifer compared with Milton's
Satan. Indeed he is sometimes horrible rather than
terrible, — falling into the fiidrirbv instead of the dsmv of
Longinus ; ^ in other words, many of his images excite
bodily disgust, and not moral fear. But here, as in other
cases, you may perceive that the faults of great authors
are generally excellencies carried to an excess.
1 De Subl. I ix.
Lecture X. 281
MILTON.
Born in London, 1608. — Died, 1674.
If we divide the period from the accession of Elizabeth
to the Protectorate of Cromwell into two unequal portions,
the first ending with the death of James I. the other com-
prehending the reign of Charles and the brief glories of the
Republic, we are forcibly struck with a difference in the
character of the illustrious actors, by whom each period is
rendered severally memorable. Or rather, the difference in
the characters of the great men in each period, leads us to
make this division. Eminent as the intellectual powers
were that were displayed in both ; yet in the number of
great men, in the various sorts of excellence, and not merely
in the variety but almost diversity of talents united in the
same individual, the age of Charles falls short of its pre-
decessor ; and the stars of the ParUament, keen as their
radiance was, in fulness and richness of lustre, yield to the
constellation at the court of Elizabeth ; — which can only be
paralleled by Greece in her brightest moment, when the
titles of the poet, the philosopher, the historian, the states-
man and the general not seldom formed a garland round the
same head, as in the instances of our Sidneys and Raleighs.
But then, on the other hand, there was a vehemence of
will, an enthusiasm of principle, a depth and an earnestness
of spirit, which the charms of individual fame and personal
aggrandisement could not pacify, — an aspiration after
reality, permanence, and general good, — in short, a moral
grandeur in the latter period, with which the low intrigues,
Machiavellic maxims, and selfish and servile ambition of
the former, stand in painful contrast.
The causes of this it belongs not to the present occasion
to detail at length ; but a mere allusion to the quick
succession of revolutions in religion, breeding a political
indifference in the mass of men to religion itself, the
enormous increase of the royal power in consequence of the
humiliation of the nobility and the clergy — the transference
of the papal authority to the crown, — the unfixed state of
Elizabeth's own opinions, whose inclinations were as
popish as her interests were protestant — the controversial
extravagance and practical imbecility of her successor —
282 Course of Lectures
will help to explain the former period ; and the persecu-
tions that had given a life-and-soul-interest to the disputes
so imprudently fostered by James, — the ardour of a
conscious increase of power in the Commons, and the
greater austerity of manners and maxims, the natural
product and most formidable weapon of religious dis-
putation, not merely in conjunction, but in closest com-
bination, with newly awakened political and republican
zeal, these perhaps account for the character of the latter
sera.
In the close of the former period, and during the bloom
of the latter, the poet Milton was educated and formed ;
and he survived the latter, and all the fond hopes and
aspirations which had been its life ; and so in evil days,
standing as the representative of the combined excellence
of both periods, he produced the Paradise Lost as by an
after-throe of nature. " There are some persons," (ob-
serves a divine, a contemporary of Milton's) " of whom the
grace of God takes early hold, and the good spirit inhabiting
them, carries them on in an even constancy through
innocence into virtue, their Christianity bearing equal date
with their manhood, and reason and religion, like warp and
woof, running together, make up one web of a wise and
exemplary life. This (he adds) is a most happy case,
wherever it happens ; for, besides that there is no sweeter
or more lovely thing on earth than the early buds of piety,
which drew from our Saviour signal affection to the beloved
disciple, it is better to have no wound than to experience
the most sovereign balsam, which, if it work a cure, yet
usually leaves a scar behind." Although it was and is my
intention to defer the consideration of Milton's own
character to the conclusion of this Lecture, yet I could not
prevail on myself to approach the Paradise Lost without
impressing on your minds the conditions under which such
a work was in fact producible at all, the original genius
having been assumed as the immediate agent and efficient
cause ; and these conditions I find in the character of the
times and in his own character. The age in which the
foundations of his mind were laid, was congenial to it as
one golden aera of profound erudition and individual genius ;
— that in which the superstructure was carried up, was no
less favourable to it by a sternness of discipline and a show
of self-control, highly flattering to the imaginative dignity
Lecture X. 283
of an heir of fame, and which won Milton over from the
dear-loved delights of academic groves and cathedral
aisles to the anti-prelatic party. It acted on him, too, no
doubt, and modified his studies by a characteristic con-
troversial spirit, (his presentation of God is tinted with it) —
a spirit not less busy indeed in political than in theological
and ecclesiastical dispute, but carrying on the former
almost always, more or less, in the guise of the latter. And
so far as Pope's censure ^ of our poet, — that he makes God
the Father a school divine — is just, we must attribute it to
the character of his age, from which the men of genius, who
escaped, escaped by a worse disease, the licentious in-
difference of a Frenchified court.
Such was the nidus or soil, which constituted, in the
strict sense of the word, the circumstances of Milton's mind.
In his mind itself there were purity and piety absolute ;
an imagination to which neither the past nor the present
were interesting, except as far as they called forth and
enlivened the great ideal, in which and for which he hved ;
a keen love of truth, which, after many weary pursuits,
found a harbour in a sublime listening to the still voice in
his own spirit, and as keen a love of his country, which,
after a disappointment still more depressive, expanded and
soared into a love of man as a probationer of immortality.
These were, these alone could be, the conditions under
which such a work as the Paradise Lost could be con-
ceived and accomplished. By a life-long study Milton had
known —
What was of use to know,
What best to say could say, to do had done.
His actions to his words agreed, his words
To his large heart gave utterance due, his heart
Contain'd of good, wise, fair, the perfect shape ;
and he left the imperishable total, as a bequest to the ages
coming, in the Paradise Lost.^
Difficult as I shall find it to turn over these leaves with-
out catching some passage, which would tempt me to stop,
I propose to consider, ist, the general plan and arrangement
of the work ; — 2ndly, the subject with its difficulties and
1 Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 264.
2 Here Mr. C. notes : "Not perhaps here, but towards, or as, the conclusion, to
chastise the fashionable notion that poetry is a relaxation or amusement, one of the
superfluous toys and luxuries of the intellect ! To contrast the permanence of poems
with the transiency and fleeting moral effects of empires, and what are called, rreat
events " Ed.
284 Course of Lectures
advantages ; — 3rdly, the poet's object, the spirit in the
letter, the Iv&xj/miov h ij.ii6(ji, the true school-divinity ; and
lastly, the characteristic excellencies of the poem, in what
they consist, and by what means they were produced.
1. As to the plan and ordonnance of the Poem.
Compare it with the Iliad, many of the books of which
might change places without any injury to the thread of
the story. Indeed, I doubt the original existence of the
Iliad as one poem ; it seems more probable that it was put
together about the time of the Pisistratidae. The Iliad —
and, more or less, all epic poems, the subjects of which are
taken from history — have no rounded conclusion ; they
remain, after all, but single chapters from the volume of
history, although they are ornamental chapters. Consider
the exquisite simplicity of the Paradise Lost. It and it
alone really possesses a beginning, a middle, and an end ;
it has the totality of the poem as distinguished from the
ah ovo birth and parentage, or straight line, of history.
2. As to the subject.
In Homer, the supposed importance of the subject, as
the first effort of confederated Greece, is an after-thought
of the critics ; and the interest, such as it is, derived from
the events themselves, as distinguished from the manner of
representing them, is very languid to aU but Greeks. It is
a Greek poem. The superiority of the Paradise Lost is
obvious in this respect, that the interest transcends the
limits of a nation. But we do not generally dwell on this
excellence of the Paradise Lost, because it seems attribut-
able to Christianity itself ; — yet in fact the interest is
wider than Christendom, and comprehends the Jewish and
Mohammedan worlds ; — nay, still further, inasmuch as it
represents the origin of evil, and the combat of evil and
good, it contains matter of deep interest to all mankind,
as forming the basis of aU religion, and the true occasion
of all philosophy whatsoever.
The Fall of man is the subject ; Satan is the cause ;
man's blissful state the immediate object of his enmity and
attack ; man is warned by an angel who gives him an
account of all that was requisite to be known, to make the
warning at once intelligible and awful, then the temptation
ensues, and the Fall ; then the immediate sensible con-
sequence ; then the consolation, wherein an angel presents
a vision of the history of men with the ultimate triumph
Lecture X. 285
of the Redeemer. Nothing is touched in this vision but
what is of general interest in rehgion ; any thing else
would have been improper.
The inferiority of Klopstock's Messiah is inexpressible.
I admit the prerogative of poetic feeling, and poetic faith ;
but I cannot suspend the judgment even for a moment.
A poem may in one sense be a dream, but it must be a
waking dream. In Milton you have a religious faith
combined with the moral nature ; it is an efflux ; you go
along with it. In Klopstock there is a wilfulness ; he
makes things so and so. The feigned speeches and events
in the Messiah shock us like falsehoods ; but nothing of
that sort is felt in the Paradise Lost, in which no parti-
culars, at least very few indeed, are touched which can
come into collision or juxta-position with recorded matter.
But notwithstanding the advantages in Milton's subject,
there were concomitant insuperable difficulties, and Milton
has exhibited marvellous skill in keeping most of them out
of sight. High poetry is the translation of reality into the
ideal under the predicament of succession of time only.
The poet is an historian, upon condition of moral power
being the only force in the universe. The very grandeur
of his subject ministered a difficulty to Milton. The
statement of a being of high intellect, warring against the
supreme Being, seems to contradict the idea of a supreme
Being. Milton precludes our feeling this, as much as
possible, by keeping the peculiar attributes of divinity
less in sight, making them to a certain extent allegorical
only. Again poetry implies the language of excitement ;
yet how to reconcile such language with God ! Hence
Milton confines the poetic passion in God's speeches to the
language of scripture ; and once only allows the passio
vera, or quasi humana to appear, in the passage, where the
Father contemplates his own likeness in the Son before the
battle :—
Go then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might.
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake Heaven's basis, bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder ; my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh ;
Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out
From all Heaven's bounds into the utter deep :
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God and Messiah his anointed king.
B. VI. V. 710.
286 Course of Lectures
3. As to Milton's object :
It was to justify the ways of God to man ! The con-
troversial spirit observable in many parts of the poem,
especially in God's speeches, is immediately attributable
to the great controversy of that age, the origination of
evil. The Arminians considered it a mere calamity. The
Calvinists took away all human will. Milton asserted the
will, but declared for the enslavement of the will out of an
act of the will itself. There are three powers in us, which
distinguish us from the beasts that perish ; — i, reason ;
2, the power of viewing universal truth ; and 3, the power
of contracting universal truth into particulars. Religion
is the will in the reason, and love in the will.
The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence,
finding in self the sole motive of action. It is the character
so often seen in little on the political stage. It exhibits all
the restlessness, temerity, and cunning which have marked
the mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napoleon.
The common fascination of men is, that these great men,
as they are called, must act from some great motive.
Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense
selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather
reign in hell than serve in heaven. To place this lust of
self in opposition to denial of self or duty, and to show
what exertions it would make, and what pains endure to
accomplish its end, is Milton's particular object in the
character of Satan. But around this character he has
thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance, and
a ruined splendour, which constitute the very height of
poetic sublimity.
Lastly, as to the execution : —
The language and versification of the Paradise Lost are
peculiar in being so much more necessarily correspondent
to each than those in any other poem or poet. The
connexion of the sentences and the position of the words
are exquisitely artificial ; but the position is rather
according to the logic of passion or universal logic, than
to the logic of grammar. Milton attempted to make the
Enghsh language obey the logic of passion, as perfectly as
the Greek and Latin. Hence the occasional harshness in
the construction.
Sublimity is the pre-eminent characteristic of the
Paradise Lost. It is not an arithmetical sublime like
Lecture X. 287
Klopstock's, whose rule always is to treat what we might
think large as contemptibly small. Klopstock mistakes
bigness for greatness. There is a greatness arising from
images of effort and daring, and also from those of moral
endurance ; in Milton both are united. The fallen angels
are human passions, invested with a dramatic reality.
The apostrophe to light at the commencement of the
third book is particularly beautiful as an intermediate
link between Hell and Heaven ; and observe, how the
second and third book support the subjective character
of the poem. In all modern poetry in Christendom there
is an under consciousness of a sinful nature, a fleeting
away of external things, the mind or subject greater than
the object, the reflective character predominant. In the
Paradise Lost the sublimest parts are the revelations of
Milton's own mind, producing itself and evolving its own
greatness ; and this is so truly so, that when that which is
merely entertaining for its objective beauty is introduced,
it at first seems a discord.
In the description of Paradise itself, you have Milton's
sunny side as a man ; here his descriptive powers are
exercised to the utmost, and he draws deep upon his
Italian resources. In the description of Eve, and through-
out this part of the poem, the poet is predominant over the
theologian. Dress is the symbol of the Fall, but the mark
of intellect ; and the metaphysics of dress are, the hiding
what is not symbolic and displaying by discrimination
what is. The love of Adam and Eve in Paradise is of the
highest merit — not phantomatic, and yet removed from
every thing degrading. It is the sentiment of one rational
being towards another made tender by a specific difference
in that which is essentially the same in both ; it is a union
of opposites, a giving and receiving mutually of the
permanent in either, a completion of each in the other.
Milton is not a picturesque, but a musical, poet ; al-
though he has this merit, that the object chosen by him
for any particular foreground always remains prominent to
the end, enriched, but not incumbered, by the opulence of
descriptive details furnished by an exhaustless imagination.
I wish the Paradise Lost were more carefully read and
studied than I can see any ground for believing it is,
especially those parts which, from the habit of always
looking for a story in poetry, are scarcely read at all, — as
288 Course of Lectures
for example, Adam's vision of future events in the nth
and I2th books. No one can rise from the perusal of this
immortal poem without a deep sense of the grandeur and
the purity of Milton's soul, or without feeling how sus-
ceptible of domestic enjoyments he really was, notwith-
standing the discomforts which actually resulted from an
apparently unhappy choice in marriage. He was, as every
truly great poet has ever been, a good man ; but finding
it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in
religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the
living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on
the world by enriching it with this record of his own tran-
scendant ideal.
Notes on Milton. 1807.1
(Hayley quotes the following passage : — )
" Time serves not now, and, perhaps, I might seem too profuse
to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the
spacious circuit of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself,
though of highest hope and hardest attempting ; whether that epic
form, whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other two of
Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief, model."
p. 69.
These latter words deserve particular notice. I do not
doubt that Milton intended his Paradise Lost as an epic of
the first class, and that the poetic dialogue of the Book of
Job was his model for the general scheme of his Paradise
Regained. Readers would not be disappointed in this
latter poem, if they proceeded to a perusal of it with a
proper preconception of the kind of interest intended to be
excited in that admirable work. In its kind it is the most
perfect poem extant, though its kind may be inferior in
interest — being in its essence didactic — to that other sort,
in which instruction is conveyed more effectively, because
less directly, in connection with stronger and more
pleasurable emotions, and thereby in a closer affinity with
action. But might we not as rationally object to an accom-
plished woman's conversing, however agreeably, because
it has happened that we have received a keener pleasure
from her singing to the harp ? Si genus sit proho et
1 These notes were written by Mr. Coleridge in a copy of Hayley's Life of Milton,
<4to. 1796), belonging to Mr. Poole. By him they were communicated, and this seems
the fittest place for their publication. Ed.
Lecture X. 289
sapienti viro haud indignum, et si poeina sit in suo genera
perfectum, satis est. Quod si hoc aiictor idem altioribus
numeris et carmini diviniori ipsum per se divinum super-
addiderit, mehercule satis est, et plusquam satis. I cannot,
however, but wish that the answer of Jesus to Satan in the
4th book (v. 285) —
Think not but that I know these things ; or think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought, &c.
had breathed the spirit of Hayley's noble quotation rather
than the narrow bigotry of Gregory the Great. The
passage is, indeed, excellent, and is partially true ; but
partial truth is the worst mode of conveying falsehood.
Hayley, p. 75. "The sincerest friends of Milton may here agree
with Johnson, who speaks of his controversial ■merriment as dis-
gusting."
The man who reads a work meant for immediate effect
on one age with the notions and feelings of another, may be
a refined gentleman, but must be a sorry critic. He who
possesses imagination enough to live with his forefathers,
and, leaving comparative reflection for an after moment,
to give himself up during the first perusal to the feelings of
a contemporary, if not a partizan, will, I dare aver, rarely
find any part of Milton's prose works disgusting.
(Hayley, p. 104. Hayley is speaking of the passage in
Milton's Answer to Icon Basilice, in which he accuses
Charles of taking his Prayer in captivity from Pamela's
prayer in the 3rd book of Sidney's Arcadia. The passage
begins, —
" But this king, not content with that which, although in a thing
holy, is no holy theft, to attribute to his own making other men's
whole prayers," &c. Symmons' ed. 1806, p. 407.)
Assuredly, I regret that Milton should have written this
passage ; and yet the adoption of a prayer from a romance
on such an occasion does not evince a delicate or deeply
sincere mind. We are the creatures of association. There
are some excellent moral and even serious lines in Hudi-
bras ; but what if a clergyman should adorn his sermon
with a quotation from that poem ! Would the abstract
propriety of the verses leave him " honourably acquitted ? "
The Christian baptism of a line in Virgil is so far from being
K
^QO Course of Lectures
a parallel, that it is ridiculously inappropriate, — an
absurdity as glaring as that of the bigoted Puritans, who
objected to some of the noblest and most scriptural prayers
ever dictated by wisdom and piety, simply because the
Roman Catholics had used them.
Hayley, p. 107. " The ambition of Milton," &c.
I do not approve the so frequent use of this word re-
latively to Milton. Indeed the fondness for ingrafting a
good sense on the word ** ambition," is not a Christian
impulse in general.
Hayley, p. no. "Milton himself seems to have thought it
allowable in literary contention to vilify, &c. the character of an
opponent ; but surely this doctrine is unworthy," &c.
If ever it were allowable, in this case it was especially so.
But these general observations, without meditation on the
particular times and the genius of the times, are most often
as unjust as they are always superficial.
(Hayley, p. 133. Hayley is speaking of Milton's
panegyric on Cromwell's government : — )
Besides, however Milton might and did regret the
immediate necessity, yet what alternative was there ?
Was it not better that Cromwell should usurp power, to
protect religious freedom at least, than that the Pres-
byterians should usurp it to introduce a religious per-
secution,— extending the notion of spiritual concerns so
far as to leave no freedom even to a man's bedchamber ?
(Hayley, p. 250. Hayley's conjectures on the origin of
the Paradise Lost : — )
If Milton borrowed a hint from any writer, it was more
probably from Strada's Prolusions, in which the Fall of the
Angels is pointed out as the noblest subject for a Christian
poet.i The more dissimilar the detailed images are, the
more likely it is that a great genius should catch the
general idea.
(Hayl. p. 294. Extracts from the Adamo of Andreini :)
" Lucifero. Che dal mio centro oscuro
Mi chiama a rimirar cotanta luce ?
1 The reference seems generally to be to the 5th Prolusion of the ist Book. Hie
arcui hac tela, quibus dim in niagno illo Superunt tumUltu princeps artnorum
Michael confixit auctoretn proditionis ; hie fulmina humana mentis terror.
* * * *. In nubibus armatas bcllo legiones instruatn, atque inde pro re nata
auxiliares ad terram capias evocabo. *••*«. Hie mihi Califes, guos essi
ferunt eletnentorum tuteiares, pritna ilia corpora tnisiebunt. Sect. 4, Ed.
Lecture XI. 291
Who from my dark abyss
Calls me to gaze on this excess of light ? "
The words in italics are an unfair translation. They
ma}^ suggest that Milton really had read and did imitate
this drama. The original is 'in so great light.' Indeed
the whole version is affectedly and inaccurately Miltonic.
lb. V. II. Che di fango opre festi —
Forming thy works of dust (no, dirt. — )
lb. V. 17. Tessa pur stella a stella,
V aggiunga e luna, e sole. —
Let him unite above
Star upon star, moon, sun.
Let him weave star to star,
Then join both moon arid sun !
lb. V. 21. Ch 'al fin con biasmo e scorno
Vana I'opra sara, vano il sudore I
Since in the end division
Shall prove his works and all his efforts vain.
Since finally with censure and disdain
Vain shall the work be, and his toil be vain !
1796.1
The reader of Milton must be always on his duty : he is
surrounded with sense ; it rises in every line ; every word
is to the purpose. There are no lazy intervals ; all has
been considered, and demands and merits observation. If
this be called obscurity, let it be remembered that it is such
an obscurity as is a compliment to the reader ; not that
vicious obscurity v/hich proceeds from a muddled head.
LECTURE XI.2
Asiatic and Greek Mythologies — Robinson Crusoe — Use of
works of Imagination in Education.
A CONFOUNDING of God with Nature, and an incapacity of
finding unity in the manifold and infinity in the individual,
— these are the origin of polytheism. The most perfect
1 From a common-place book of Mr. C.'s, communicated by Mr. J. M. Gutch. Ed,
2 Partly from Mr. Green's note. Ed.
292 Course of Lectures
instance of this kind of theism is that of early Greece ;
other nations seem to have either transcended, or come
short of, the old Hellenic standard, — a mythology in itself
fundamentally allegorical, and typical of the powers and
functions of nature, but subsequently mixed up with a
deification of great men and hero-worship, — so that finally
the original idea became inextricably combined with the
form and attributes of some legendary individual. In
Asia, probably from the greater unity of the government
and the still surviving influence of patriarchal tradition,
the idea of the unity of God, in a distorted reflection of the
Mosaic scheme, was much more generally preserved ; and
accordingly all other super or ultra-human beings could
only be represented as ministers of, or rebels against, his
will. The Asiatic genii and fairies are, therefore, always
endowed with moral qualities, and distinguishable as
malignant or benevolent to man. It is this uniform
attribution of fixed moral qualities to the supernatural
agents of eastern mythology that particularly separates
them from the divinities of old Greece.
Yet it is not altogether improbable that in the Samo-
thracian or Cabeiric mysteries the link between the Asiatic
and Greek popular schemes of mythology lay concealed.
Of these mysteries there are conflicting accounts, and,
perhaps, there were variations of doctrine in the lapse of
ages and intercourse with other systems. But, upon a
review of all that is left to us on this subject in the writings
of the ancients, we may, I think, make out thus much of an
interesting fact, — that Cabiri, impliedly at least, meant
socii, complices, having a hypostatic or fundamental union
with, or relation to, each other ; that these mysterious
divinities were, ultimately at least, divided into a higher
and lower triad ; that the lower triad, primi qida infimi,
consisted of the old Titanic deities or powers of nature,
under the obscure names of Axieros, Axiokersos, and
Axiokersa, representing symbolically different modifica-
tions of animal desire or material action, such as hunger,
thirst, and fire, without consciousness ; that the higher
triad, uUimi quia superior es, consisted of Jupiter (Pallas,
or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury, mystically cafled
Cadmilos) and Venus, representing, as before, the vovg or
reason, the Xoyoc or word or communicative power, and the
ipug or love ; — that the Cadmilos or Mercury, the mani-
Lecture XI. 293
fested, communicated, or sent, appeared not only in his
proper person as second of the higher triad, but also as a
mediator between the higher and lower triad, and so there
were seven divinities ; and, indeed, according to some
authorities, it might seem that the Cadmilos acted once
as a mediator of the higher, and once of the lower, triad,
and that so there were eight Cabeiric divinities. The lower
or Titanic powers being subdued, chaos ceased, and
creation began in the reign of the divinities of mind and
love ; but the chaotic gods still existed in the abyss, and
the notion of evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the
Greek necromancy.
These mysteries, like all the others, were certainly in
connection with either the Phoenician or Egyptian systems,
perhaps with both. Hence the old Cabeiric powers were
soon made to answer to the corresponding popular
divinities ; and the lower triad was called by the un-
initiated, Ceres, Vulcan or Pluto, and Proserpine, and the
Cadmilos became Mercury. It is not without ground that
I direct your attention, under these circumstances, to the
probable derivation of some portion of this most remark-
able system from patriarchal tradition, and to the connec-
tion of the Cabeiri with the Kabbala.
The Samothracian mysteries continued in celebrity till
some time after the commencement of the Christian era.^
But they gradually sank with the rest of the ancient
system of mythology, to which, in fact, they did not
properly belong. The peculiar doctrines, however, were
preserved in the memories of the initiated, and handed
down by individuals. No doubt they were propagated in
Europe, and it is not improbable that Paracelsus received
many of his opinions from such persons, and I think a
connection may be traced between him and Jacob Behmen.
The Asiatic supernatural beings are all produced by
imagining an excessive magnitude, or an excessive small-
ness combined with great power ; and the broken associa-
tions, which must have given rise to such conceptions, are
the sources of the interest which they inspire, as exhibiting,
through the working of the imagination, the idea of power
in the will. This is delightfully exemplified in the Arabian
1 In the reign of Tiberius, a.d. i8, Germanicns attempted to visit Samothrace ; —
ilium in regressn sacra Samothracum viscre nitentejn obvii aquitoncs depulere.
Tacit. Ann. II. c. 54. Ed.
294 Course of Lectures
Nights' Entertainments, and indeed, more or less, in other
works of the same kind. In all these there is the same
activity of mind as in dreaming, that is — an exertion of the
fancy in the combination and recombination of familiar
objects so as to produce novel and wonderful imagery.
To this must be added that these tales cause no deep
feeling of a moral kind — whether of religion or love ; but
an impulse of motion is communicated to the mind without
excitement, and this is the reason of their being so generally
read and admired.
I think it not unlikely that the Milesian Tales contained
the germs of many of those now in the Arabian Nights ;
indeed it is scarcely possible to doubt that the Greek
Empire must have left deep impression on the Persian
intellect. So also many of the Roman Catholic legends
are taken from Apuleius. In that exquisite story of Cupid
and Psyche, the allegory is of no injury to the dramatic
vividness of the tale. It is evidently a philosophic
attempt to parry Christianity with a qnasi-Fl3itonic
account of the fall and redemption of the soul.
The charm of De Foe's works, especially of Robinson
Crusoe, is founded on the same principle. It always
interests, never agitates. Crusoe himself is merely a
representative of humanity in general ; neither his intel-
lectual nor his moral qualities set him above the middle
degree of mankind ; his only prominent characteristic
is the spirit of enterprise and wandering, which is, never-
theless, a very common disposition. You will observe
that all that is wonderful in this tale is the result of external
circumstances — of things which fortune brings to Crusoe's
hand.
NOTES ON ROBINSON CRUSOE.^
Vol. L p. 17. But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy
that nothing could resist ; and though I had several times loud calls
from my reason, and my more composed judgment, to go home, yet
I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I
urge that it is a secret over-ruling decree that hurries us on to be
the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us,
and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.
The wise only possess ideas ; the greater part of man-
kind are possessed by them. Robinson Crusoe was not
1 These notes were written by Mr. C. in Mr. Gillman's copy of Robinson Crusoe, in
the summer of 1830. The references in the text are to Major's edition, 1831. Ed.
Lecture XI. 295
conscious of the master impulse, even because it was his
master, and had taken, as he says, full possession of him.
When once the mind, in despite of the remonstrating
conscience, has abandoned its free power to a haunting
impulse or idea, then whatever tends to give depth and
vividness to this idea or indefinite imagination, increases
its despotism, and in the same proportion renders the
reason and free will ineffectual. Now, fearful calamities,
sufferings, horrors, and hair-breadth escapes will have this
effect, far more than even sensual pleasure and prosperous
incidents. Hence the evil consequences of sin in such
cases, instead of retracting or deterring the sinner, goad
him on to his destruction. This is the moral of Shak-
speare's Macbeth, and the true solution of this paragraph,
— not any overruling decree of divine wrath, but the
tyranny of the sinner's own evil imagination, which he
has voluntarily chosen as his master.
Compare the contemptuous Swift with the contemned
De Foe, and how superior will the latter be found ! But
by what test ? — Even by this ; that the writer who makes
me sympathize with his presentations with the whole of
my being, is more estimable than he who calls forth, and
appeals but to, a part of my being — my sense of the
ludicrous, for instance. De Foe's excellence it is, to make
me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances,
and to raise me while I read him, into the universal man.
P. 80. I smiled to myself at the sight of this money : " O drug ! "
said I aloud, &c. However upon second thonohts, I took it away ;
and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, &c.
Worthy of Shakspeare ! — and yet the simple semicolon
after it, the instant passing on without the least pause of
reflex consciousness, is more exquisite and masterlike than
the touch itself. A meaner writer, a Marmontel, would
have put an (!) after 'away,' and have commenced a fresh
paragraph. 30th July, 1830.
P. III. And I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God's
providence began to abate too, upon the discovering that all this
was nothing but what was common ; though I ought to have been
as thankful for so strange and unforeseen a providence, as if it had
been miraculous.
To make men feel the truth of this is one characteristic
object of the miracles v/orked by Moses ; — in them the
providence is miraculous, the miracles providential.
296
Course of Lectures
p. 126. The growing up of the com, as is hinted in my Journal,
had, at first, some httle influence upon me, and began to affect me
with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous
in it, &c.
By far the ablest vindication of miracles which I have
met with. It is indeed the true ground, the proper
purpose and intention of a miracle.
P. 141. To think that this was all my own, that I was king and
lord of all this country indefeasibly, &c.
By the by, what is the law of England respecting this ?
Suppose I had discovered, or been wrecked on an un-
inhabited island, would it be mine or the king's ?
P. 223. I considered — that as I could not foresee what the ends
of divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute his
sovereignty, who, as I was his creature, had an undoubted right,
by creation, to govern and dispose of me absolutely as he thought
fit, &c.
I could never understand this reasoning, grounded on a
complete misapprehension of St. Paul's image of the potter,
Rom. ix,, or rather I do fully understand the absurdit}^ of
it. The susceptibility of pain and pleasure, of good and
evil, constitutes a right in every creature endowed there-
with in relation to every rational and moral being, — a
fortiori therefore, to the Supreme Reason, to the absolutely
good Being. Remember Davenant's verses ; —
Doth it our reason's mutinies appease
To say, the potter may his own clay mould
To every use, or in what shape he please.
At first not counsell'd, nor at last controll'd ?
Power's hand can neither easy be, nor strict
To lifeless clay, which ease nor torment knows,
And where it cannot favour or afiflict.
It neither justice or injustice shows.
But souls have life, and life eternal too :
Therefore if doom'd before they can offend.
It seems to show what heavenly power can do,
But does not in that deed that power commend.
Death of Astragon, st. 88, &c.
P. 232-3. And this I must observe with grief too, that the dis-
composure of my mind had too great impressions also upon the
religious parts of my thoughts, — praying to God being properly an
act of the mind, not of the body.
As justly conceived as it is beautifully expressed. And
Lecture XL 297
a mighty motive for habitual prayer ; for this cannot but
greatly facilitate the performance of rational prayer even
in moments of urgent distress.
P. 244. That this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in.
all their barbarities practised in America.
De Foe was a true philanthropist, who had risen above
the antipathies of nationality ; but he was evidently
partial to the Spanish character, which, however, it is not,
I fear, possible to acquit of cruelty. Witness the Nether-
lands, the Inquisition, the late Guerilla warfare, &c.
P. 249. That I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account
for ; but certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits, &c.
This reminds me of a conversation I once overheard.
" How a statement so injurious to Mr. A. and so contrary
to the truth, should have been made to you by Mr. B. I do
not pretend to account for ; — only I know of my own
knowledge that B. is an inveterate liar, and has long
borne malice against Mr. A. ; and I can prove that he has
repeatedly declared that in some way or other he would
do Mr. A. a mischief."
P. 254. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or
grotto of its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark ;
the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of small loose gravel on
it, &c.
How accurate an observer of nature De Foe was ! The
reader will at once recognise Professor Buckland's caves
and the diluvial gravel.
P. 308. I entered into a long discourse with him about the devil,
the original of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man,
the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world
to be worshipped instead of God, &c.
I presume that Milton's Paradise Lost must have been
bound up with one of Crusoe's Bibles ; otherwise I should
be puzzled to know where he found all this history of the
Old Gentleman. Not a word of it in the Bible itself, I am
quite sure. But to be serious. De Foe did not reflect
that all these difficulties are attached to a mere fiction, or,
at the best, an allegory, supported by a few popular
phrases and figures of speech used incidentally or dramati-
cally by the Evangelists. — and that the existence of a
personal, intelligent, evil being, the counterpart and
298
Course of Lectures
antagonist of God, is in direct contradiction to the most
express declarations of Holy Writ. " Shall there he evil
in a city, and the Lord hath not done it ? " Amos iii. 6.
" I make peace and create evil." Isa. xlv. 7. This is the
deep m37stery of the abyss of God.
Vol. ii. p. 3- I tiave often heard persons of good judgment say,
* * * that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, a ghost
walking, and the like, &c.
I cannot conceive a better definition of Body than
" spirit appearing," or of a flesh-and-blood man than a
rational spirit apparent. But a spirit per se appearing
is tantamount to a spirit appearing without its appear-
ances. And as for ghosts, it is enough for a man of
common sense to observe, that a ghost and a shadow are
concluded in the same definition, that is, visibility without
tangibiUty.
P, 9. She was, in a few words, the stay of all my affairs, the
centre of all my enterprises, &c.
The stay of his affairs, the centre of his interests, the
regulator of his schemes and movements, whom it soothed
his pride to submit to, and in complying with whose
wishes the conscious sensation of his acting will increased
the impulse, while it disguised the coercion, of duty ! —
the clinging dependent, yet the strong supporter — the
comforter, the comfort, and the soul's living home ! This
is De Foe's comprehensive character of the wife, as she
should be ; and, to the honour of womanhood be it spoken,
there are few neighbourhoods in which one name at least
might not be found for the portrait.
The exquisite paragraphs in this and the next page, in
addition to others scattered, though with a sparing hand,
through his novels, afford sufficient proof that De Foe was
a first-rate master of periodic style ; but with sound
judgment, and the fine tact of genius, he has avoided it as
adverse to, nay, incompatible with, the every-day mattei
of fact realness, which forms the charm and the character
of all his romances. The Robinson Crusoe is like the \dsion
of a happy night-mair, such as a denizen of Elysium might
be supposed to have from a little excess in his nectar and
ambrosia supper. Our imagination is kept in full play,
excited to the highest ; yet all the while we are touching,
or touched by, common flesh and blood.
Lecture XI. 299
p. 67. The ungrateful creatures began to be as insolent and
troublesome as before, &c.
How should it be otherwise ? They were idle ; and
when we will not sow corn, the devil will be sure to sow
weeds, night-shade, henbane, and devil's bit.
P. 82. That hardened villain was so far from denying it, that
he said it was true, and him they would do it still before
they had done with them.
Observe when a man has once abandoned himself to
wickedness, he cannot stop, and does not join the devils
till he has become a devil himself. Rebelling against his
conscience he becomes the slave of his own furious will.
One excellence of De Foe, amongst many, is his sacrifice
of lesser interest to the greater because more universal.
Had he (as without any improbability he might have done)
given his Robinson Crusoe any of the turn for natural
history, which forms so striking and delightful a feature
in the equally uneducated Dampier ; — had he made him
lind out qualities and uses in the before (to him) unknown
plants of the island, discover, for instance, a substitute
for hops, or describe birds, &c. — many delightful pages
and incidents might have enriched the book ; — but then
Crusoe would have ceased to be the universal representa-
tive, the person for whom every reader could substitute
himself. But now nothing is done, thought, suffered, or
desired, but what every man can imagine himself doing,
thinking, feeling, or wishing for. Even so very easy a
problem as that of finding a substitute for ink, is with
exquisite judgment made to baffle Crusoe's inventive
faculties. And in what he does, he arrives at no excel-
lence ; he does not make basket work hke Will Atkins ; the
carpentering, tailoring, pottery, &c. are all just what will
answer his purposes, and those are confined to needs that
all men have, and comforts that all men desire. Crusoe
rises only to the point to which all men may be made to
feel that they might, and that they ought to, rise in
religion, — to resignation, dependence on, and thankful
acknowledgment of, the divine mercy and goodness.
In the education of children, love is first to be instilled,
and out of love obedience is to be educed. Then impulse
300 Course of Lectures
and power should be given to the intellect, and the ends
of a moral being be exhibited. For this object thus much
is effected by works of imagination ; — that they carry the
mind out of self, and show the possible of the good and
the great in the human character. The height, whatever
it may be, of the imaginative standard will do no harm ;
we are commanded to imitate one who is inimitable.
We should address ourselves to those faculties in a child's
mind, which are first awakened by nature, and conse-
quently first admit of cultivation, that is to say, the
memory and the imagination. ^ The comparing pov/er,
the judgment, is not at that age active, and ought not to
be forcibly excited, as is too frequently and mistakenly
done in the modern systems of education, which can only
lead to selfish views, debtor and creditor principles of
virtue, and an inflated sense of merit. In the imagination
of man exist the seeds of all moral and scientific improve-
ment ; chemistry was first alchemy, and out of astrology
sprang astronomy. In the childhood of those sciences
the imagination opened a way, and furnished materials,
on which the ratiocinative powers in a maturer state
operated with success. The imagination is the distin-
guishing characteristic of man as a progressive being ;
and I repeat that it ought to be carefully guided and
strengthened as the indispensable means and instrument
of continued amelioration and refinement. Men of genius
and goodness are generally restless in their minds in the
present, and this, because they are by a law of their nature
unremittingly regarding themselves in the future, and
contemplating the possible of moral and intellectual
advance towards perfection. Thus we live by hope and
faith ; thus we are for the most part able to realize what
we win, and thus we accomplish the end of our being.
The contemplation of futurity inspires humility of soul
in our judgment of the present.
I think the memory of children cannot, in reason, be too
much stored with the objects and facts of natural history.
God opens the images of nature, like the leaves of a book,
before the eyes of his creature, Man — and teaches him all
1 He (Sir W. Scott) " detested and despised the whole generation of modern
children's books in which the attempt is made to convey accurate notions of scientific
minutiae, delighting cordially on the other hand in those of the preceding age. which
addressing themselves chiefly to the imagination obtain through it, as he believed, the
best chance of stirring our graver faculties also." — Li/e of Scott.
Lecture XII. 301
that is grand and beautiful in the foaming cataract, the
glassy lake, and the floating mist.
The common modern novel, in which there is no imagi-
nation, but a miserable struggle to excite and gratify mere
curiosity, ought, in my judgment, to be wholly forbidden to
children. Novel-reading of this sort is especially injurious
to the growth of the imagination, the judgment, and the
morals, especially to the latter, because it excites mere
feelings without at the same time ministering an impulse
to action. Women are good novelists, but indifferent
poets ; and this because they rarely or never thoroughly
distinguish between fact and fiction. In the jumble of the
two lies the secret of the modern novel, which is the medium
aliquid between them, having just so much of fiction as to
obscure the fact, and so much of fact as to render the
fiction insipid. The perusal of a fashionable lady's novel,
is to me very much like looking at the scenery and decora-
tions of a theatre by broad daylight. The source of the
common fondness for novels of this sort rests in that dislike
of vacancy, and that love of sloth, which are inherent in
the human mind ; they afford excitement without pro-
ducing reaction. By reaction I mean an activity of the
intellectual faculties, which shows itself in consequent
reasoning and observation, and originates action and
conduct according to a principle. Thus, the act of thinking
presents two sides for contemplation, — that of external
causality, in which the train of thought may be considered
as the result of outward impressions, of accidental com-
binations, of fancy, or the associations of the memory, —
and on the other hand, that of internal causality, or of the
energy of the will on the mind itself. Thought, therefore,
might thus be regarded as passive or active ; and the same
faculties may in a popular sense be expressed as per-
ception or observation, fancy or imagination, memory or
recollection.
LECTURE XII.
Dreams — Apparitions — Alchemists — Personality of the Evil
Being — Bodily Identity.
It is a general, but, as it appears to me, a mistaken opinion,
that in our ordinary dreams we judge the objects to be real.
I say our ordinary dreams ; — because as to the night-mair
302 Course of Lectures
the opinion is to a considerable extent just. But the
night-mair is not a mere dream, but takes place when the
waking state of the brain is recommencing, and most often
during a rapid alternation, a twinkling, as it were, of sleeping
and waking ; — while either from pressure on, or from some
derangement in, the stomach or other digestive organs
acting on the external skin (which is still in sympathy with
the stomach and bowels), and benumbing it, the sensations
sent up to the brain by double touch (that is, when my own
hand touches my side or breast) are so faint as to be
merely equivalent to the sensation given by single touch,
as when another person's hand touches me. The mind,
therefore, which at all times, with and without our distinct
consciousness, seeks for, and assumes, some outward cause
for every impression from without, and which in sleep, by
aid of the imaginative faculty, converts its judgments
respecting the cause into a personal image as being the
cause, — the mind, I say, in this case, deceived by past
experience, attributes the painful sensation received to a
correspondent agent, — an assassin, for instance, stabbing
at the side, or a goblin sitting on the breast. Add too that
the impressions of the bed, curtains, room, &c. received
by the eyes in the half-moments of their opening, blend
with, and give vividness and appropriate distance to, the
dream image which returns when they close again ; and
thus we unite the actual perceptions, or their immediate
reliques, with the phantoms of the inward sense ; and
in this manner so confound the half-waking, half-sleeping,
reasoning power, that we actually do pass a positive judg-
ment on the reality of what we see and hear, though often
accompanied by doubt and self-questioning, which, as I
have myself experienced, will at times become strong
enough, even before we awake, to convince us that it is
what it is — namely, the night-mair.
In ordinary dreams we do not judge the objects to be
real ; — we simply do not determine that they are unreal.
The sensations which they seem to produce, are in truth
the causes and occasions of the images ; of which there
are two obvious proofs : first, that in dreams the strangest
and most sudden metamorphoses do not create any sensa-
tion of surprise : and the second, that as to the most
dreadful images, which during the dream were accompanied
with agonies of terror, we merely awake, or turn round on
Lecture XII. 303
the other side, and off fly both image and agony, which
would be impossible if the sensations were produced by the
images. This has always appeared to me an absolute
demonstration of the true nature of ghosts and appari-
tions— such I mean of the tribe as were not pure inven-
tions. Fifty years ago, (and to this day in the ruder
parts of Great Britain and Ireland, in almost every kitchen
and in too many parlours it is nearly the same,) you might
meet persons who would assure you in the most solemn
manner, so that you could not doubt their veracity at
least, that they had seen an apparition of such and such a
person, — in many cases, that the apparition had spoken to
them ; and they would describe themselves as having been
in an agony of terror. The}^ would tell you the story in
perfect health. Now take the other class of facts, in which
real ghosts have appeared ; — I mean, where figures have
been dressed up for the purpose of passing for apparitions :
— in every instance I have known or heard of (and I have
collected very many) the consequence has been either
sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever.
Whence comes the difference ? evidently from this, — that
in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by
slight internal causes gradually and all together brought
into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly
exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the
mere effects and exponents, as the motions of the weather-
cock are of the wind ; — while in the other case, the image
rushing through the senses upon a nervous system, wholly
unprepared, actually causes the sensation, which is some-
times powerful enough to produce a total check, and almost
always a lesion or inflammation. Who has not witnessed
the difference in shock when we have leaped down half-a-
dozen steps intentionally, and that of having missed a
single stair ? How comparatively severe the latter is ! The
fact really is, as to apparitions, that the terror produces
the image instead of the contrary ; for in omnem actum
perceptionis influit imaginatio, as says Wolfe.
O, strange is the self-power of the imagination — when
painful sensations have made it their interpreter, or return-
ing gladsomeness or convalescence has made its chilled and
evanished figures and landscape bud, blossom, and live in
scarlet, green, and snowy white (like the fire-screen in-
scribed with the nitrate and muriate of cobalt,) — strange is
304 Course of Lectures
the power to represent the events and circumstances, even
to the anguish or the triumph of the quasi-credent soul,
while the necessary conditions, the only possible causes of
such contingencies, are known to be in fact quite hopeless ;
— yea, when the pure mind would recoil from the eve-
lengthened shadow of an approaching hope, as from a
crime : — and yet the effect shall have place, and substance,
and living energy, and, on a blue islet of ether, in a whole
sky of blackest cloudage, shine like a firstling of creation 1
To return, however, to apparitions, and by way of an
amusing illustration of the nature and value of even con-
temporary testimony upon such subjects, I will present
you with a passage, literally translated by my friend, Mr.
Southey, from the well known work of Bernal Dias, one of
the companions of Cortez, in the conquest of Mexico :
Here it is that Gomara says, that Francisco de Morla rode forward
on a dappled grey horse, before Cortes and the cavalry came up,
and that the apostle St. lago, or St. Peter, was there. I must say
that all our works and victories are by the hand of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that in this battle there were for each of us so many
Indians, that they could have covered us with handfuls of earth,
if it had not been that the great mercy of God helped us in every
thing. And it may be that he of whom Gomara speaks, was the
glorious Santiago or San Pedro, and I, as a sinner, was not worthy
to see him ; but he whom I saw there and knew, was Francisco de
Morla on a chesnut horse, who came up with Cortes. And it seems
to me that now while I am writing this, the whole war is represented
before these sinful eyes, just in the manner as we then went through
it. And though I, as an unworthy sinner, might not deserve to see
either of these glorious apostles, there were in our company above
fovir hundred soldiers and Cortes, and many other knights ; and it
would have been talked of and testified, and they would have made
a church when they peopled the town, which would have been called
Santiago de la Vittoria, or San Pedro de la Vittoria, as it is now
called, Santa Maria de la Vittoria. And if it was, as Gomara says,
bad Christians must we have been when our Lord God sent us his
holy apostles, not to acknowledge his great mercy, and venerate his
church daily. And would to God, it had been, as the Chronicler
says ! — but till I read his Chronicle, I never heard such a thing
from any of the conquerors who were there.
Now, what if the odd accident of such a man as Bernal
Dias' writing a history had not taken place ! Gomara's
account, the account of a contemporary, which yet must
have been read by scores who were present, would ha\'e
remained uncontradicted. I remember the story of a man,
whom the devil met and talked with, but left at a particular
lane ; — the man followed him with his eyes, and when the
Lecture XII. 305
devil got to the turning or bend of the lane, he vanished !
The devil was upon this occasion drest in a blue coat, plush
waistcoat, leather breeches and boots, and talked and
looked just like a common man, except as to a particular
lock of hair which he had. " And how do you know then
that it was the devil ? " " How do I know," replied the
fellow, — " why, if it had not been the devil, being drest as
he was, and looking as he did, why should I have been sore
stricken with fright when I first saw him ? and why should
I be in such a tremble all the while he talked ? And, more-
over, he had a particular sort of a kind of a look, and when
I groaned and said, upon every question he asked me,
Lord have mercy upon me ! or, Christ have mercy upon
me ! it was plain enough that he did not like it, and so he
left me ! " — The man was quite sober when he related this
story ; but as it happened to him on his return from
market, it is probable that he was then muddled. As for
myself, I was actually seen in Newgate in the winter of
1798 ; — the person who saw me there, said he had asked my
name of Mr. A. B. a known acquaintance of mine, who
told him that it was young Coleridge, who had married the
eldest Miss . " Will you go to Newgate, Sir ? " said
my friend ; for I assure you that Mr. C. is now in Germany."
** Very willingly," replied the other, and away they went
to Newgate, and sent for A. B. " Coleridge," cried he, " in
Newgate ! God forbid ! " I said, " young Col who
married the eldest Miss ." The names were something
similar. And yet this person had himself really seen me at
one of my lectures.
I remember, upon the occasion of my inhaling the
nitrous oxide at the Royal Institution, about five minutes
afterwards, a gentleman came from the other side of the
theatre and said to me, — " Was it not ravishingly delight-
ful, Sir ? " — " It was highly pleasurable, no doubt." —
** Was it not very like sweet music ? " — " I cannot say I
perceived any analogy to it." — " Did you not say it was
very like Mrs. Billington singing by your ear ! " — " No,
Sir, I said that while I was breathing the gas, there was a
singing in my ears."
To return, however, to dreams, I not only believe, for
the reasons given, but have more than once actually
experienced that the most fearful forms, when produced
simply by association, instead of causing fear, operate no
3o6 Course of Lectures
other effect than the same would do if they had passed
through my mind as thoughts, while I was composing a
faery tale ; the whole depending on the wise and gracious
law in our nature, that the actual bodily sensations, called
forth according to the law of association by thoughts and
images of the mind, never greatly transcend the limits of
pleasurable feeling in a tolerably healthy frame, unless
when an act of the judgment supervenes and interprets
them as purporting instant danger to ourselves.
1 There have been very strange and incredible stories
told of and by the alchemists. Perhaps in some of them
there may have been a specific form of mania, originating in
the constant intension of the mind on an imaginary end,
associated with an immense variety of means, all of them
substances not familiar to men in general, and in forms
strange and unlike to those of ordinary nature. Some-
times, it seems as if the alchemists wrote like the Pytha-
goreans on music, imagining a metaphysical and inaudible
music as the basis of the audible. It is clear that by
sulphur they meant the solar rays or light, and by mercury
the principle of ponderability, so that their theory was the
same with that of the Heraclitic physics, or the modern
German N atur-philosophie, which deduces all things from
light and gravitation, each being bipolar ; gravitation =
north and south, or attraction and repulsion ; light = east
and west, or contraction and dilation ; and gold being the
tetrad, or interpenetration of both, as water was the dyad
of light, and iron the dyad of gravitation.
It is, probably, unjust to accuse the alchemists generally
of dabbling with attempts at magic in the common sense
of the term. The supposed exercise of magical power
always involved some moral guilt, directly or indirectly,
as in stealing a piece of meat to lay on warts, touching
humours with the hand of an executed person, &c. Rites
of this sort and other practices of sorcery have always
been regarded with trembling abhorrence by all nations,
even the most ignorant, as by the Africans, the Hudson's
Bay people and others. The alchemists were, no doubt,
often considered as dealers in art magic, and many of them
were not unwilling that such a belief should be prevalent ;
and the more earnest among them evidently looked at their
association of substances, fumigations, and other chemical
1 From Mr. Green's note.
Lecture XII. 307
operations as merely ceremonial, and seem, therefore, to
have had a deeper meaning, that of evoking a latent power.
It would be profitable to make a collection of all the cases of
cures by magical charms and incantations ; much useful
information might, probably, be derived from it ; for it is
to be observed that such rites are the form in which medical
knowledge would be preserved amongst a barbarous and
ignorant people.
Note.^ June, 1827.
The apocryphal book of Tobit consists of a very simple,
but beautiful and interesting, family-memoir, into which
some later Jewish poet or fabulist of Alexandria wove the
ridiculous and frigid machinery, borrowed from the popular
superstitions of the Greeks (though, probably, of Egyptian
origin), and accommodated, clumsily enough, to the purer
monotheism of the Mosaic law. The Rape of the Lock is
another instance of a simple tale thus enlarged at a later
period, though in this case by the same author, and with a
very different result. Now unless Mr. Hillhouse is Romanist
enough to receive this nursery-tale garnish of a domestic
incident as grave history, and holy writ, (for which, even
from learned Roman Catholics, he would gain more credit
as a very obedient child of the Church than as a biblical
critic,) he will find it no easy matter to support this asser-
tion of his by the passages of Scripture here referred to,
consistently with any sane interpretation of their import
and purpose.
I. The Fallen Spirits.
This is the mythological form, or, if you will, the sym-
bolical representation, of a profound idea necessary as the
prcB-suppositum of the Christian scheme, or a postulate of
reason, indispensable, if we would render the existence
of a world of finites compatible with the assumption
of a super-mundane God, not one with the world. In
short, this idea is the condition under which alone the
reason of man can retain the doctrine of an infinite and
absolute Being, and yet keep clear of pantheism as ex-
hibited by Benedict Spinosa.
II. The Egyptian Magicians.
This whole narrative is probably a relic of the old
1 Written in a copy of Mr. Hillhouse's Hadad. Ed.
3o8
Course of Lectures
diplomatic lingua-arcana, or state-symbolique — in which
the prediction of events is expressed as the immediate
causing of them. Thus the prophet is said to destroy the
city, the destruction of which he predicts. The word
which our version renders by " enchantments " signifies
" flames or burnings," by which it is probable that the
Egyptians were able to deceive the spectators, and sub-
stitute serpents for staves. See Parkhurst in voce.
And with regard to the possessions in the Gospels, bear
in mind first of all, that spirits are not necessarily souls or
Fs (ich-keiten or self-consciousnesses), and that the most
ludicrous absurdities would follow from taking them as
such in the Gospel instances ; and secondly, that the
Evangelist, who has recorded the most of these incidents,
himself speaks of one of these possessed persons as a
lunatic ; — (^as7^r,vid^srai — s^7JX6iv octt avrov to da,i/j.6viov. Matt.
xvii. 15, 18) while St. John names them not at all, but
seems to include them under the description of diseased or
deranged persons. That madness may result from
spiritual causes, and not only or principally from physical
ailments, may readily be admitted. Is not our will itself
a spiritual power ? Is it not the spirit of the man ? The
mind of a rational and responsible being {that is, of a free-
agent) is a spirit, though it does not follow that aU spirits
are minds. Who shall dare determine what spiritual
influences may not arise out of the collective evil wills of
wicked men ? Even the bestial life, sinless in animals and
their nature, may when awakened in the man and by his
own act admitted into his will, become a spiritual influence.
He receives a nature into his will, which by this very act
becomes a corrupt will ; and vice versa, this will becomes
his nature, and thus a corrupt nature. This may be con-
ceded ; and this is aU that the recorded words of our
Saviour absolutely require in order to receive an appro-
priate sense ; but this is altogether different from making
spirits to be devils, and devils self-conscious individuals.
Lecture XII. 309
Notes. ^ March, 1824.
A Christian's conflicts and conquests, p, 459. By the devil we
are to understand that apostate spirit which fell from God, and is
always designing to hale down others from God also. The Old
Dragon (mentioned in the Revelation) with his tail drew down the
third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
How much it is to be regretted, that so enlightened and
able a divine as Smith, had not philosophically and
scripturally enucleated this so difficult yet important
question, — respecting the personal existence of the evil
principle ; that is, whether as ro kTov of paganism is 0 ^log
in Christianity, so the t6 'rrovriphv is to be 6 Tovripog, — and
whether this is an express doctrine of Christ, and not
merely a Jewish dogma left undisturbed to fade away under
the increasing light of the Gospel, instead of assuming the
former, and confirming the position by a verse from a
poetic tissue of visual symbols, — a verse alien from the
subject, and by which the Apocalypt enigmatized the
Neronian persecutions and the apostasy through fear
occasioned by it in a large number of converts.
lb. p. 463. When we say, the devil is continually busy with us,
I mean not only some apostate spirit as one particular being, but
that spirit of apostasy which is lodged in all men's natures ; and
this may seem particularly to be aimed at in this place, if we observe
the context : — as the scripture speaks of Christ not only as a parti-
cular person, but as a divine principle in holy souls.
Indeed the devil is not only the name of one particular thing,
but a nature.
May I not venture to suspect that this was Smith's own
belief and judgment ? and that his conversion of the
Satan, that is, circuitor, or minister of police (what our
Sterne calls the accusing angel) in the prologue to Job into
the devil was a mere condescension to the prevailing pre-
judice ? Here, however, he speaks like himself, and like
a true religious philosopher, who felt that the personality
of evil spirits is a trifling question, compared with the
personality of the evil principle. This is indeed most
momentous.
1 Written in a copy of " Select Discourses by John Smith, of Queen's College,
Cambridge, 1660," and communicated by the Rev. Edward Coleridge. Ed,
3IO Course of Lectures
Note on a Passage in the Life of Henry,
Earl of Morland. 20th June, 1827.
The defect of this and all similar theories that I am
acquainted with, or rather, let me say, the desideratum, is
the neglect of a previous definition of the term " body."
What do you mean by it ? The immediate grounds of a
man's size, visibihty, tangibihty, &c. ? — But these are in
a continual flux even as a column of smoke. The material
particles of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, lime,
phosphorus, sulphur, soda, iron, that constitute the
ponderable organism in May, 1827, at the moment of
Pollio's death in his 70th year, have no better claim to be
called his " body," than the numerical particles of the
same names that constituted the ponderable mass in May,
1787, in Pollio's prime of manhood in his 30th year ; — the
latter no less than the former go into the grave, that is,
suffer dissolution, the one in a series, the other simultan-
eously. The result to the particles is precisely the same in
both, and of both therefore we must say with holy Paul, —
" Thou fool ! that which thou sow est, thou sow est not that
body that shall be," &c. Neither this nor that is the body
that abideth. Abideth, I say ; for that which riseth again
must have remained, though perhaps in an inert state. — It
is not dead, but sleepeth ; — that is, it is not dissolved any
more than the exterior or phenomenal organism appears to
us dissolved when it lieth in apparent inactivity during our
sleep.
Sound reasoning this, to the best of my judgment, as far
as it goes. But how are we to explain the reaction of this
fluxional body on the animal ? In each moment the
particles by the informing force of the living principle con-
stitute an organ not only of motion and sense, but of con-
sciousness. The organ plays on the organist. How is
this conceivable ? The solution requires a depth, stillness,
and subtlety of spirit not only for its discovery, but even
for the understanding of it when discovered, and in the
most appropriate words enunciated. I can merely give a
hint. The particles themselves must have an interior and
gravitate being, and the multeity must be a removable or
at least suspensible accident.
Lecture XIII. 311
LECTURE XIII.
On Poesy or Art.
Man communicates by articulation of sounds, and para-
mountly by the memory in tne ear ; nature by the im-
pression of bounds and surfaces on the eye, and through
the eye it gives significance and appropriation, and thus
the conditions of memory, or the capabihty of being re-
membered, to sounds, smells, &c. Now, Art, used col-
lectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is
the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and
man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of
infusing the thoughts and passions of man into every thing
which is the object of his contemplation ; colour, form,
motion and sound are the elements which it combines,
and it stamps them into unity in the mould of a moral
idea.
The primary art is writing ; — primary, if we regard the
purpose abstracted from the different modes of realizing it,
those steps of progression of which the instances are still
visible in the lower degrees of civilization. First, there is
mere gesticulation ; then rosaries or wampun ; then
picture-language ; then hieroglyphics, and finally alpha-
betic letters. These aU consist of a translation of man into
nature, of a substitution of the visible for the audible.
The so called music of savage tribes as little deserves the
name of art for the understanding as the ear warrants it for
music. Its lowest state is a mere expression of passion by
sounds which the passion itself necessitates ; — the highest
amounts to no more than a voluntary reproduction ol these
sounds in the absence of the occasioning causes, so as to
give the pleasure of contrast, — for example, by the various
outcries of battle in the song of security and triumph.
Poetry also is purely human ; for aU its materials are from
the mind, and all its products are for the mind. But it is
the apotheosis of the former state, in which by excitement
of the associative power passion itself imitates order, and
the order resulting produces a pleasurable passion, and thus
it elevates the mind by making its feelings the o! ject of its
reflexion. So likewise, whilst it recalls the sights and
sounds that had accompanied the occasions of the original
312 Course of Lectures
passions, poetry impregnates them with an interest not
their own by means of the passions, and yet tempers the
passion by the calming power which all distinct images
exert on the human soul. In this way poetry is the pre-
paration for art, inasmuch as it avails itself of the forms of
nature to recall, to express, and to modify the thoughts and
feelings of the mind. Still, however, poetry can only act
through the intervention of articulate speech, which is so
peculiarly human, that in all languages it constitutes the
ordinary phrase by which man and nature are contra-
distinguished. It is the original force of the word 'brute' ;
and even 'mute,' and 'dumb' do not convey the absence of
sound, but the absence of articulated sounds.
As soon as the human mind is intelligibly addressed by
an outward image exclusively of articulate speech, so soon
does art commence. But please to observe that I have laid
particular stress on the words ' human mind, ' meaning to
exclude thereby aU results common to man and all other
sentient creatures, and consequently confining myself to
the effect produced by the congruity of the animal im-
pression with the reflective powers of the mind ; so that not
the thing presented, but that which is represented by the
thing shall be the source of the pleasure. In this sense
nature itself is to a religious observer the art of God ; and
for the same cause art itself might be defined as of a middle
quality between a thought and a thmg ; or, as I said before,
the union and reconciliation of that which is nature with
that which is exclusively human. It is the figured lan-
guage of thought, and is distinguished from nature by the
unity of all the parts in one thought or idea. Hence nature
itself would give us the impression of a work of art if we
could see the thought which is present at once in the whole
and in every part ; and a work of art will be just in pro-
portion as it adequately conveys the thought, and rich
in proportion to the variety of parts which it holds in
unity.
If, therefore, the term 'mute' be taken as opposed not
to sound but to articulate speech, the old definition of
painting will in fact be the true and best definition of the
Fine Arts in general, that is, muta poesis, mute poesy,
and so of course poesy. And, as all languages perfect
themselves by a gradual process of desynonymizing words
originally equivalent, I have cherished the wish to use the
Lecture XIII. 313
word 'poesy' as the generic or common term, and to dis-
tinguish that species of poesy which is not muta poesis by
its usual name 'poetry ;' while of all the other species
which collectively form the Fine Arts, there would remain
this as the common definition, — that they all, like poetry,
are to express intellectual purposes, thoughts, conceptions,
and sentiments which have their origin in the human mind,
not, however, as poetry does, by means of articulate speech,
but as nature or the divine art does, by form, co our,
magnitude, proportion, or by sound, that is, silently or
musically.
Well ! it may be said — but who has ever thought other-
wise ! We all know that art is the imitatress of nature.
And, doubtless, the truths which I hope to convey, would
be barren truisms, if all men meant the same by the
words 'imitate' and 'nature.' But it would be flattering
mankind at large, to presume that such is the fact. First,
to imitate. The impression on the wax is not an imita-
tion, but a copy, of the seal ; the seal itself is an imitation.
But, further, in order to form a philosophic conception, we
must seek for the kind, as the heat in ice, invisible light, &c.
whilst, for practical purposes, we must have reference to
the degree. It is sufficient that philosophically we under-
stand that in all imitation two elements must coexist, and
not only coexist, but must be perceived as coexisting.
These two constituent elements are likeness and unlikeness,
or sameness and difference. And in all genuine creations of
art there must be a union of these disparates. The artist
may take his point of viev/ where he pleases, provided that
the desired effect be perceptibly produced, — that there be
likeness in the difference, difference in the likeness, and a
reconcilement of both in one. If there be likeness to nature
without any check of difference, the result is disgusting,
and the more complete the delusion, the more loathsome
the effect. Why are such simulations of nature, as
wax-work figures of men and women, so disagreeable ?
Because, not finding the motion and the life which we
expected, we are shocked as by a falsehood, every circum-
stance of detail, which before induced us to be interested,
making the distance from truth more palpable. You set
out with a supposed reality and are disappointed and dis-
gusted with the deception ; whilst, in respect to a work of
genuine imitation, you begin with an acknowledged total
314 Course of Lectures
difference, and then every touch of nature gives you the
pleasure of an approximation to truth. The fundamental
principle of all this is undoubtedly the horror of falsehood
and the love of truth inherent in the human breast. The
Greek tragic dance rested on these principles, and I can
deeply sympathize in imagination with the Greeks in this
favourite part of their theatrical exhibitions, when I call to
mind the pleasure I felt in beholding the combat of the
Horatii and Curiatii most exquisitely danced in Italy to the
music of Cimarosa.
Secondly, as to nature. We must imitate nature ! yes,
but what in nature, — all and everything ? No, the
beautiful in nature. And what then is the beautiful ?
What is beauty ? It is, in the abstract, the unity of
the manifold, the coalescence of the diverse ; in the con-
crete, it is the unian of the shapely {formosum) with the
vital. In the dead organic it depends on regularity of
form, the first and lowest species of which is the triangle
with all its modifications, as in crystals, architecture, &c. ;
in the living organic it is not mere regularity of form, which
would produce a sense of formalit}^ ; neither is it sub-
servient to any thing beside itself. It may be present
in a disagreeable object, in which the proportion of the
parts constitutes a whole ; it does not arise from associa-
tion, as the agreeable does, but sometimes lies in the
rupture of association ; it is not different to different
individuals and nations, as has been said, nor is it connected
with the ideas of the good, or the fit, or the useful. The
sense of beauty is intuitive, and beauty itself is all that
inspires pleasure without, and aloof from, and even con-
trarily to, interest.
If the artist copies the mere nature, the natura naturata,
what idle rivalry ! If he proceeds only from a given form,
which is supposed to answer to the notion of beauty, what
an emptiness, what an unreality there always is in his pro-
ductions, as in Cipriani's pictures ! Believe me, you must
master the essence, the natura natiirans, which presupposes
a bond between nature in the higher sense and the soul of
man.
The wisdom in nature is distinguished from that in man,
by the co-instantaneit}^ of the plan and the execution ;
the thought and the product are one, or are given at once ;
but there is no reflex act, and hence there is no moral
Lecture XIII. 315
responsibility. In man there is reflexion, freedom, and
choice ; he is, therefore, the head of the visible creation.
In the objects of nature are presented, as in a mirror, all
the possible elements, steps, and processes of intellect
antecedent to consciousness, and therefore to the full
development of the intelligential act ; and man's mind is
the very focus of all the rays of intellect which are scattered
throughout the images of nature. Now so to place these
images, totalized, and fitted to the limits of the human
mind, as to elicit from, and to superinduce upon, the forms
themselves the moral reflexions to which they approximate,
to make the external internal, the internal external, to
make nature thought, and thought nature, — this is the
mystery of genius in the Fine Arts. Dare I add that the
genius must act on the feeling, that body is but a striving
to become mind, that it is mind in its essence !
In every work of art there is a reconcilement of the ex-
ternal with the internal ; the conscious is so impressed on
the unconscious as to appear in it ; as compare mere
letters inscribed on a tomb with figures themselves con-
stituting the tomb. He who combines the two is the man
of genius ; and for that reason he must partake of both.
Hence there is in genius itself an unconscious activity ;
nay, that is the genius in the man of genius. And this is
the true exposition of the rule that the artist must first eloign
himself from nature in order to return to her with full effect.
Why this ? Because if he were to begin by mere painful
copying, he would produce masks only, not forms breathing
life. He must out of his own mind create forms according
to the severe laws of the intellect, in order to generate in
himself that co-ordination of freedom and law, that in-
volution of obedience in the prescript, and of the prescript
in the impulse to obey, which assimilates him to nature, and
enables him to understand her. He merely absents him-
self for a season from her, that his own spirit, which has
the same ground with nature, may learn her unspoken
language in its main radicals, before he approaches to her
endless compositions of them. Yes, not to acquire cold
notions — lifeless technical rules — but living and life-
producing ideas, which shall contain their own evidence, the
certainty that they are essentially one with the germinal
causes in nature — his consciousness being the focus and
mirror of both, — for this does the artist for a time abandon
3i6 Course of Lectures
the external real in order to return to it with a complete
sympathy with its internal and actual. For of all we see,
hear, feel and touch the substance is and must be in our-
selves ; and therefore there is no alternative in reason
between the dreary (and thank heaven ! almost impossible)
belief that every thing around us is but a phantom, or that
the life which is in us is in them likewise ; ^ and that to
know is to resemble, when we speak of objects out of our-
selves, even as within ourselves to learn is, according to
Plato, only to recollect ; — the only effective answer to
which, that I have been fortunate enough to meet with, is
that which Pope has consecrated for future use in the line —
And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin !
The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that
which is active through form and figure, and discourses to
us by symbols — the Natur-geist, or spirit of nature, as we
unconsciously imitate those whom we love ; for so only can
he hope to produce any work truly natural in the object
and truly human in the effect. The idea which puts the
form together cannot itself be the form. It is above form,
and is its essence, the universal in the individual, or the
individuality itself, — the glance and the exponent of the
indwelling power.
Each thing that lives has its moment of self-exposition,
and so has each period of each thing, if we remove the dis-
turbing forces of accident. To do this is the business of
ideal art, whether in images of childhood, youth, or age,
in man or in woman. Hence a good portrait is the
abstract of the personal ; it is not the likeness for actual
comparison, but for recollection. This explains why the
likeness of a very good portrait is not always recognized ;
because some persons never abstract, and amongst these
are especially to be numbered the near relations and friends
of the subject, in consequence of the constant pressure and
check exercised on their minds by the actual presence of
the original. And each thing that only appears to live has
also its possible position of relation to life, as nature herself
testifies, who, where she cannot be, prophesies her being in
the crystallized metal, or the inhaling plant.
The charm, the indispensable requisite, of sculpture is
1 See the Biographia Literaria of Mr. Coleridge, chap, xii., and Schclllng's
Transcendental Idealism.
Lecture XIII. 317
unity of effect. But painting rests in a material remoter
from nature, and its compass is therefore greater. Light
and shade give external, as well as internal, being even
with all its accidents, whilst sculpture is confined to the
latter. And here I may observe that the subjects chosen
for works of art, whether in sculpture or painting, should
be such as really are capable of being expressed and con-
veyed within the limits of those arts. Moreover they ought
to be such as will affect the spectator by their truth, their
beauty, or their sublimity, and therefore they may be
addressed to the judgment, the senses, or the reason. The
peculiarity of the impression which they may make, may
be derived either from colour and form, or from proportion
and fitness, or from the excitement of the moral feelings ; or
all these may be combined. Such works as do combine
these sources of effect must have the preference in dignity.
Imitation of the antique may be too exclusive, and may
produce an injurious effect on modern sculpture ; — ist,
generally, because such an imitation cannot fail to have a
tendency to keep the attention fixed on externals rather
than on the thought within ; — 2ndly, because, accordingly,
it leads the artist to rest satisfied with that which is always
imperfect, namely, bodily form, and circumscribes his
views of mental expression to the ideas of power and
grandeur only ; — Srdly, because it induces an effort to
combine together two incongruous things, that is to say,
modern feelings in antique forms ; — 4thly, because it
speaks in a language, as it were, learned and dead, the tones
of which, being unfamiliar, leave the common spectator
cold and unimpressed ; — and lastly, because it necessarily
causes a neglect of thoughts, emotions and images of pro-
founder interest and more exalted dignity, as motherly,
sisterly, and brotherly love, piety, devotion, the divine
become human, — the Virgin, the Apostle, the Christ. The
artist's principle in the statue of a great man should be the
illustration of departed merit ; and I cannot but think
that a skilful adoption of modern habiliments would, in
many instances, give a variety and force of effect which a
bigoted adherence to Greek or Roman costume precludes.
It is, I believe, from artists finding Greek models unfit for
several important modern purposes, that we see so many
allegorical figures on monuments and elsewhere. Painting
was, as it were, a new art, and being unshackled by old
3i8 Course of Lectures
models it chose its own subjects, and took an eagle's
flight. And a new field seems opened for modern sculpture
m the symbolical expression of the ends of life, as in
Guy's monument, Chantrey's children in Worcester Cathe-
dral, &c.
Architecture exhibits the greatest extent of the difference
from nature which may exist in works of art. It involves
all the powers of design, and is sculpture and painting in-
clusively. It shews the greatness of man, and should at
the same time teach him humility.
Music is the most entirely human of the fine arts, and
has the fewest analoga in nature. Its first delightfulness is
simple accordance with the ear ; but it is an associated
thing, and recaUs the deep emotions of the past with an
intellectual sense of proportion. Every human feeling is
greater and larger than the exciting cause, — a proof, I
think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence ;
and this is deeply implied in music, in which there is always
something more and beyond the immediate expression.
With regard to works in all the branches of the fine arts,
I may remark that the pleasure arising from novelty
must of course be allowed its due place and weight. This
pleasure consists in the identity of two opposite elements,
that is to say — sameness and variety. If in the midst of
the variety there be not some fixed object for the attention,
the unceasing succession of the variety will prevent the
mind from observing the difference of the individual
objects ; and the only thing remaining will be the suc-
cession, which will then produce precisely the same effect
as sameness. This we experience when we let the trees or
hedges pass before the fixed eye during a rapid movement
in a carriage, or on the other hand, when we suffer a file of
soldiers or ranks of men in procession to go on before us
without resting the eye on any one in particular. In order
to derive pleasure from the occupation of the mind, the
principle of unity must always be present, so that in the
midst of the multeity the centripetal force be never sus-
pended, nor the sense be fatigued by the predominance of
the centrifugal force. This unity in multeity I have else-
where stated as the principle of beauty. It is equally the
source of pleasure in variety, and in fact a higher term
including both. What is the seclusive or distinguishing
term between them !
Lecture XIV. 319
Remember that there is a difference between form as
proceeding, and shape as superinduced ; — the latter is
either the death or the imprisonment of the thing ; — the
former is its self-witnessing and self-effected sphere of
agency. Art would or should be the abridgment of
nature. Now the fulness of nature is without character,
as water is purest when without taste, smell, or colour ;
but this is the highest, the apex only, — it is not the whole.
The object of art is to give the whole ad hominem ; hence
each step of nature hath its ideal, and hence the possibility
of a climax up to the perfect form of a harmonized chaos.
To the idea of life victory or strife is necessary ; as
virtue consists not simply in the absence of vices, but in the
overcoming of them. So it is in beauty. The sight of
what is subordinated and conquered heightens the strength
and the pleasure ; and this should be exhibited by the
artist either inclusively in his figure, or else out of it and
beside it to act by way of supplement and contrast. And
with a view to this, remark the seeming identity of body and
mind in infants, and thence the loveliness of the former ;
the commencing separation in boyhood, and the struggle of
equilibrium in youth : thence onward the body is first
simply indifferent ; then demanding the translucency of
the mind not to be worse than indifferent ; and finally all
that presents the body as body becoming almost of an
excremental nature.
LECTURE XIV.
On Style.
I HAVE, I believe, formerly observed with regard to the
character of the governments of the East, that their
tendency was despotic, that is, towards unity ; whilst that
of the Greek governments, on the other hand, leaned to
the manifold and the popular, the unity in them being
purely ideal, namely of all as an identification of the whole.
In the northern or Gothic nations the aim and purpose of
the government were the preservation of the rights and
interests of the individual in conjunction with those of the
whole. The individual interest was sacred. In the char-
acter and tendency of the Greek and Gothic languages there
320 Course of Lectures
is precisely the same relative difference. In Greek the
sentences are long, and the structure architectural, so that
each part or clause is insignificant when compared with
the whole. The result is every thing, the steps and pro-
cesses nothing. But in the Gothic and, generally, in what
we call the modern, languages, the structure is short,
simple, and complete in each part, and the connexion of the
parts with the sum total of the discourse is maintained by
the sequency of the logic, or the community of feelings
excited between the writer and his readers. As an instance
equally delightful and complete, of what may be called the
Gothic structure as contradistinguished from that of the
Greeks, let me cite a part of our famous Chaucer's char-
acter of a parish priest as he should be. Can it ever be
quoted too often ?
A good man ther was of religioun
That was a poure Parsone of a toun,
But riche he WcLS of holy thought and werk ;
He w£LS also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche ;
His parishens ^ devoutly wolde he teche ;
Benigne he was, and wonder ^ diligent,
And in adversite ful patient,
And swiche ^ he was ypreved * often sithes ^ ;
Ful loth were him to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he yeven ^ out of doute
Unto his poure parishens aboute
Of his offring, and eke of his substance ;
He coude in litel thing have suffisance :
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder.
But he ne ' left nought for no rain ne « thonder.
In sikenesse and in mischief to visite
The ferrest ^ in his parish moche and lite ^°
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf :
This noble ensample to his shepe he yaf,'^
That first he wnrought, and afterward he taught,
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught,
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold ruste, what should iren do.
He sette not his benefice to hire,
And lette ^^ his shepe accombred ^^ in the mire.
And ran unto London unto Seint Poules,
To seken him a chanterie for soules.
Or with a brotherhede to be withold,
But dwelt at home, and kepte wel his fold,
1 Parishioners. " Wondrous. ' Such.
* Proved. ^ Times. ^ Give or have given.
7 Not. 8 Nor. 8 Farthest.
10 Great and small. " Gave. ^ Left. 13 Encumbered
Lecture XIV. 321
So that the wolf ne made it not miscarie :
He was a shepherd and no mercenarie ;
And though he holy were and vertuous.
He was to sinful men not dispitous,^
Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne,'*
But in his teching discrete and benigne,
To drawen folk to heven with fairenesse,
By good ensample was his besinesse ;
But it were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of high or low estat,
Him wolde he snibben ^ sharply for the nones :
A better preest I trowe that no wher non is ;
He waited after no pompe ne reverence,
He maked him no spiced conscience,
But Cristes love and his apostles' twelve
He taught, but first he folwed it himselve.*
Such change as really took place in the style of our
literature after Chaucer's time is with difficulty perceptible,
on account of the death of writers, during the civil wars of
the 15th century. But the transition was not very great ;
and accordingly we find in Latimer and our other venerable
authors about the time of Edward VI. as in Luther, the
general characteristics of the earliest manner ; — that is,
every part popular, and the discourse addressed to all
degrees of intellect ; — the sentences short, the tone
vehement, and the connexion of the whole produced by
honesty and singleness of purpose, intensity of passion, and
pervading importance of the subject.
Another and a very different species of style is that
which was derived from, and founded on, the admiration
and cultivation of the classical writers, and which was more
exclusively addressed to the learned class in society. I
have previously mentioned Boccaccio as the original
Italian introducer of this manner, and the great models of it
in English are Hooker, Bacon, Milton, and Taylor, although
it may be traced in many other authors of that age. In all
these the language is dignified but plain, genuine English,
although elevated and brightened by superiority of in-
tellect in the writer. Individual words themselves are
always used by them in their precise meaning, without
either affectation or slipslop. The letters and state papers
of Sir Francis Walsingham are remarkable for excellence
in style of this description. In Jeremy Taylor the
sentences are often extremely long, and yet are generally
i Despiteous. - Proud. 3 Reprove. 4 Proloeue to Canterbury Tales.
L
322 Course of Lectures
so perspicuous in consequence of their logical structure,
that they require no perusal to be understood ; and it is for
the most part the same in Milton and Hooker.
Take the following sentence as a specimen of the sort of
style to which I have been alluding : —
Concerning Faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal
verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in
Christ ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof is that ever-
lasting goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead ; concerning
Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible beauty
which shineth in the countenance of Christ, the Son of the living
God : concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning here
with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with the
intuitive vision of God in the world to come ; the second beginning
here with a trembling expectation of things far removed, and as
yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that
which no tongue can express ; the third beginning here with a
weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able
to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is
higher than the reach of the thoughts of men ; concerning that
Faith, Hope, and Charity, v.-ithout which there can be no salvation,
was there ever any mention made saving only in that Law which
God himself hath from Heaven revealed ? There is not in the
world a syllable muttered with certain truth concerning any of
these three, more than hath been supernaturally received from the
mouth of the eternal God.
Eccles. Pol. I. s. II.
The unity in these writers is produced by the unity of
the subject, and the perpetual growth and evolution of the
thoughts, one generating, and explaining, and justifying,
the place of another, not, as it is in Seneca, where the
thoughts, striking as they are, are merely strung together
like beads, without any causation or progression. The
words are selected because they are the most appropriate,
regard being had to the dignity of the total impression, and
no merely big phrases are used where plain ones would have
sufficed, even in the most learned of their works.
There is some truth in a remark, which I believe was
made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the greatest man is he
who forms the taste of a nation, and that the next greatest
is he who corrupts it. The true classical style of Hooker and
his fellows was easily open to corruption ; and Sir Thomas
Brown it was, who, though a writer of great genius, first
effectually injured the literary taste of the nation by his
introduction of learned words, merely because they were
learned. It would be difficult to describe Brown ade-
Lecture XIV. 323
quately ; exuberant in conception and conceit, dignified,
hyperlatinistic, a quiet and sublime enthusiast ; yet a
fantast, a humourist, a brain with a twist ; egotistic Uke
Montaigne, yet with a feehng heart and an active curiosity,
which, however, too often degenerates into a hunting after
oddities. In his Hydriotaphia and, indeed, almost all his
"works the entireness of his mental action is very observable ;
he metamorphoses every thing, be it what it may, into the
subject under consideration. But Sir Thomas Brown
with all his faults had a genuine idiom ; and it is the exist-
ence of an individual idiom in each, that makes the prin-
cipal writers before the Restoration the great patterns or
integers of English style. In them the precise intended
meaning of a word can never be mistaken ; whereas in the
latter writers, as especially in Pope, the use of words is for
the most part purely arbitrary, so that the context will
rarely show the true specific sense, but only that something
of the sort is designed. A perusal of the authorities cited
by Johnson in his dictionary under any leading word, will
give you a lively sense of this declension in etymologi-
cal truth of expression in the writers after the Restora-
tion, or perhaps, strictly, after the middle of the reign of
Charles II.
The general characteristic of the style of our literature
down to the period which I have just mentioned, was
gravity, and in Milton and some other writers of his day
there are perceptible traces of the sternness of republican-
ism. Soon after the Restoration a material change took
place, and the cause of royalism was graced, sometimes
disgraced, by every shade of lightness of manner. A free
and easy style was considered as a test of loyalty, or at
all events, as a badge of the cavalier party ; you may
detect it occasionally even in Barrow, who is, however, in
general remarkable for dignity and logical sequency of
expression ; but in L' Estrange, CoUyer, and the writers
of that class, this easy manner was carried out to the
utmost extreme of slang and ribaldry. Yet still the works,
even of these last authors, have considerable merit in one
point of view ; their language is level to the understand-
ings of all men ; it is an actual transcript of the collo-
quialism of the day, and is accordingly full of life and
reality. Roger North's life of his brother, the Lord
Keeper, is the most valuable specimen of this class of our
324 Course of Lectures
literature ; it is delightful, and much beyond any other
of the writings of his contemporaries.
From the common opinion that the English style
attained its greatest perfection in and about Queen Ann's
reign I altogether dissent ; not only because it is in one
species alone in which it can be pretended that the writers
of that age excelled their predecessors ; but also because
the specimens themselves are not equal, upon sound prin-
ciples of judgment, to much that had been produced
before. The classical structure of Hooker — the impetuous,
thought-agglomerating flood of Taylor — to these there is
no pretence of a parallel ; and for mere ease and grace, is
Cowley inferior to Addison, being as he is so much more
thoughtful and full of fancy ? Cowley, with the omission
of a quaintness here and there, is probably the best model
of style for modern imitation in general. Taylor's periods
have been frequently attempted by his admirers ; you
may, perhaps, just catch the turn of a simile or single
image, but to write in the real manner of Jeremy Taylor
would require as mighty a mind as his. Many parts of
Algernon Sidney's treatises afford excellent exemplars of
a good modern practical style ; and Dryden in his prose
works, is a still better model, if you add a stricter and
purer grammar. It is, indeed, worthy of remark that all
our great poets have been good prose writers, as Chaucer,
Spenser, Milton ; and this probably arose from their just
sense of metre. For a true poet will never confound verse
and prose ; whereas it is almost characteristic of indifferent
prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into
scraps of metre. Swift's style is, in its line, perfect ; the
manner is a complete expression of the matter, the terms
appropriate, and the artifice concealed. It is simplicity
in the true sense of the word.
After the Revolution, the spirit of the nation became
much more commercial, than it had been before ; a
learned body, or clerisy, as such, gradually disappeared,
and literature in general began to be addressed to the
common miscellaneous public. That public had become
accustomed to, and required, a strong stimulus ; and to
meet the requisitions of the public taste, a style was
produced which by combining triteness of thought with
singularity and excess of manner of expression, was calcu-
lated at once to soothe ignorance and to flatter vanity.
Lecture XIV. 325
The thought was carefully kept down to the immediate
apprehension of the commonest understanding, and the
dress was as anxiously arranged for the purpose of making
the thought appear something very profound. The essence
of this style consisted in a mock antithesis, that is, an
opposition of mere sounds, in a rage for personification,
the abstract made animate, far-fetched metaphors, strange
phrases, metrical scraps, in every thing, in short, but
genuine prose. Style is, of course, nothing else but the
art of conveying the meaning appropriately and with
perspicuity, whatever that meaning may be, and one
criterion of style is that it shall not be translateable with-
out injury to the meaning. Johnson's style has pleased
many from the very fault of being perpetually translate-
able ; he creates an impression of cleverness by never
saying any thing in a common way. The best specimen
of this manner is in Junius, because his antithesis is less
merely verbal than Johnson's. Gibbon's manner is the
worst of all ; it has every fault of which this peculiar style
is capable. Tacitus is an example of it in Latin ; in
coming from Cicero you feel the falsetto immediately.
In order to form a good style, the primary rule and
condition is, not to attempt to express ourselves in language
before we thoroughly know our own meaning : — when a
man perfectly understands himself, appropriate diction
will generally be at his command either in writing or
speaking. In such cases the thoughts and the words are
associated. In the next place preciseness in the use of
terms is required, and the test is whether you can translate
the phrase adequately into simpler terms, regard being had
to the feeling of the whole passage. Try this upon Shak-
speare, or Milton, and see if you can substitute other
simpler words in any given passage without a violation of
the meaning or tone. The source of bad writing is the
desire to be something more than a man of sense, — the
straining to be thought a genius ; and it is just the same
in speech-making. If men would only say what they
ha\e to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they
would be ! Another rule is to avoid converting mere
abstractions into persons. I believe you will very rarely
find in any great writer before the Revolution the possessive
case of an inanimate noun used in prose instead of the
dependent case, as 'the watch's hand,' for 'the hand of
326
Idea of the
the watch. ' The possessive or Saxon genitive was confined
to persons, or at least to animated subjects. And I cannot
conclude this Lecture without insisting on the importance
of accuracy of style as being near akin to veracity and
truthful habits of mind ; he who thinks loosely will write
loosely, and, perhaps, there is some moral inconvenience
in the common forms of our grammars which give children
so many obscure terms for material distinctions. Let me
also exhort you to careful examination of what you read, if
it be worthy any perusal at all ; such examination will be
a safeguard from fanaticism, the universal origin of which
is in the contemplation of phenomena without investigation
into their causes.
ON THE
PROMETHEUS OF ^SCHYLUS :
An Essay, preparatory to a series of disquisitions respecting the
Egyptian, in connexion with the sacerdotal, theology, and in
contrast with the mysteries of ancient Greece. Read at the Royal
Society of Literature, May i8, 1825.
The French savans who went to Egypt in the train of
Buonaparte, Denon, Fourrier, and Dupuis, (it has been
asserted,) triumphantly vindicated the chronology of
Herodotus, on the authority of documents that cannot
lie ; — namely the inscriptions and sculptures on those
enormous masses of architecture, that might seem to have
been built in the wish of rivalling the mountains, and at
some unknown future to answer the same purpose, that
is, to stand the gigantic tombstones of an elder world. It
is decided, say the critics, whose words I have before cited,
that the present division of the zodiac had been already
arranged by the Egyptians fifteen thousand years before
the Christian era, and according to an inscription 'which
cannot lie* the temple of Esne is of eight thousand years
standing.
Now, in the first place, among a people who had placed
their national pride in their antiquity, I do not see the
impossibility of an inscription lying ; and, secondly, as
little can I see the improbability of a modern interpreter
misunderstanding it ; and lastly, the incredibility of a
Prometheus of ^schylus 327
French infidel's partaking of both defects, is still less
evident to my understanding. The inscriptions may be,
and in some instances, very probably are, of later date
than the temples themselves, — the offspring of vanity or
priestly rivalry, or of certain astrological theories ; or the
temples themselves may have been built in the place of
former and ruder structures, of an earlier and ruder
period, and not impossibly under a different scheme of
hieroglyphic or significant characters ; and these may
have been intentionally, or ignorantly, miscopied or mis-
translated.
But more than all the preceding, — I cannot but persuade
myself, that for a man of sound judgment and enlightened
common sense — a man with whom the demonstrable laws
of the human mind, and the rules generahzed from the
great mass of facts respecting human nature, weigh more
than any two or three detached documents or narrations,
of whatever authority the narrator may be, and however
difficult it may be to bring positive proofs against the
antiquity of the documents — I cannot but persuade myself,
I say, that for such a man, the relation preserved in the
first book of the Pentateuch, — and which, in perfect
accordance with all analogous experience, with all the
facts of history, and all that the principles of political
economy would lead us to anticipate, conveys to us the
rapid progress in civilization and splendour from Abraham
and Abimelech to Joseph and Pharaoh, — will be worth a
whole library of such inferences.
I am aware that it is almost universal to speak of the
gross idolatry of Egypt ; nay, that arguments have been
grounded on this assumption in proof of the divine origin
of the Mosaic monotheism. But first, if by this we are to
understand that the great doctrine of the one Supreme
Being was first revealed to the Hebrew legislator, his own
inspired writings supply abundant and direct confutation
of the position. Of certain astrological superstitions, —
of certain talismans connected with star-magic, — plates
and images constructed in supposed harmony with the
movements and influences of celestial bodies, — there
doubtless exist hints, if not direct proofs, both in the
Mosaic writings, and those next to these in antiquity.
But of plain idolatry in Egypt, or the existence of a
polytheistic religion, represented by various idols, each
328 Idea of the
signif5dng a several deity, I can find no decisive proof in
the Pentateuch ; and when I collate these with the books
of the prophets, and the other inspired writings subse-
quent to the Mosaic, I cannot but regard the absence of
any such proof in the latter, compared with the numerous
and powerful assertions, or evident impHcations, of
Egyptian idolatry in the former, both as an argument of
incomparably greater value in support of the age and
authenticity of the Pentateuch ; and as a strong pre-
sumption in favour of the hypothesis on which I shall in
part ground the theory which will pervade this series of
disquisitions ; — namely, that the sacerdotal religion of
Egypt had, during the interval from Abimelech to Moses,
degenerated from the patriarchal monotheism into a pan-
theism, cosmotheism, or worship of the world as God.
The reason or pretext, assigned by the Hebrew legislator
to Pharaoh for leading his countrymen into the wilderness
to join with their brethren, the tribes who still sojourned
in the nomadic state, namely, that their sacrifices would
be an abomination to the Egyptians, may be urged as
inconsistent with, nay, as confuting this hypothesis. But
to this I reply, first, that the worship of the ox and cow was
not, in and of itself, and necessarily, a contravention of the
first commandment, though a very gross breach of the
second ; — for it is most certain that the ten tribes wor-
shipped the Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, under the same or similar s3mibols : — secondly
that the cow, or Isis, and the lo of the Greeks, truly repre-
sented, in the first instance, the earth or productive nature,
and afterwards the mundane religion grounded on the wor-
ship of nature, or the to crai', as God. In after times, the ox
or bull was added, representing the sun, or generative
force of nature, according to the habit of male and female
deities, which spread almost over the whole world, — the
positive and negative forces in the science of superstition ;
— for the pantheism of the sage necessarily engenders
polytheism as the popular creed. But lastly, a very
sufficient reason may, I think, be assigned for the choice
of the ox or cow, as representing the very life of nature,
by the first legislators of Egypt, and for the similar sacred
character in the Brahmanic tribes of Hindostan. The
progress from savagery to civilization is evidently first
from the hunting to the pastoral state, a process which
Prometheus of ^schylus 329
even now is going on, within our own times, among the
South American Indians in the vast tracts between Buenos
Ayres and the Andes : but the second and the most im-
portant step, is from the pastoral, or wandering, to the
agricultural, or fixed, state. Now, if even for men born
and reared under European civilization, the charms of a
wandering hfe have been found so great a temptation,
that few who have taken to it have been induced to return
(see the confession in the preamble to the statute respecting
the gipsies) ; ^ — how much greater must have been the
danger of relapse in the first formation of fixed states with
a condensed population ? And what stronger prevention
could the ingenuity of the priestly kings — (for the priestly
is ever the first form of government) — devise, than to
have made the ox or cow the representatives of the divine
principle in the world, and, as such, an object of adoration,
the wilful destruction of which was sacrilege ? — For this
rendered a return to the pastoral state impossible ; in
which the flesh of these animals and the milk formed
almost the exclusive food of mankind ; while, in the
meantime, by once compelling and habituating men to the
use of a vegetable diet, it enforced the laborious cultivation
of the soil, and both produced and permitted a vast and
condensed population. In the process and continued
sub-divisions of polytheism, this great sacred Word, —
for so the consecrated animals were called, }spoi Xoyoi, —
became multiplied, tiU almost every power and supposed
attribute of nature had its symbol in some consecrated
animal from the beetle to the hawk. Wherever the powers
of nature had found a cycle for themselves, in which the
powers still produced the same phenomenon during a given
period, whether in the motions of the heavenly orbs, or in
the smallest living organic body, there the Egyptian sages
predicated life and mind. Time, cyclical time, was their
abstraction of the deity, and their holidays were their gods.
The diversity between theism and pantheism may be
most simply and generally expressed in the following
formula, in which the material universe is expressed by
W, and the deity by G.
W-G=0;
1 The Act meant is probably the 5. Eliz. c. 20, enforcing the two previous Acts of
Henry VIII. and Philip and Mary, and reciting that natural born Englishmen had
' become of the fellowship of the said vagabonds, by transforming or disguising them*
selves in their apparel,' &c. — Ed.
330 Idea of the
or the World without God is an impossible conception.
This position is common to theist and pantheist. But
the pantheist adds the converse —
G-\V = 0;
for which the theist substitutes —
G-W = G;
or that —
G = G, anterior and irrelative to the existence of the
world, is equal to G + W.^
Before the mountains were, Thou art. — I am not about to
lead the society beyond the bounds of my subject into
divinity or theology in the professional sense. But with-
out a precise definition of pantheism, without a clear
insight into the essential distinction between it and the
theism of the Scriptures, it appears to me impossible to
understand either the import or the history of the poly-
theism of the great historical nations. I beg leave, there-
fore, to repeat, and to carry on my former position, that
the religion of Egypt, at the time of the Exodus of the
Hebrews, was a pantheism, on the point of passing into
that polytheism, of which it afterwards afforded a specimen,
gross and distasteful even to polytheists themselves of
other nations.
The objects which, on my appointment as Royal
Associate of the Royal Society of Literature, I proposed to
myself were, ist. The elucidation of the purpose of the
Greek drama, and the relations in which it stood to the
mysteries on the one hand, and to the state or sacerdotal
religion on the other : — 2nd. The connection of the Greek
tragic poets with philosophy as the peculiar offspring of
Greek genius : — 3rd. The connection of the Homeric and
cyclical poets with the popular religion of the Greeks : and,
lastly from all these, — namely, the mysteries, the sacer-
dotal religion, their philosophy before and after Socrates,
the stage, the Homeric poetry and the legendary belief of
the people, and from the sources and productive causes in
the derivation and confluence of the tribes that finally
shaped themselves into a nation of Greeks — to give a juster
1 Mr. Coleridge was in the constant habit of expres>ing himself on paper by the
algebraic symbols. They have an uncouth look in the text of an ordinary essay, and I
have sometimes ventured to render them by the equivalent words. But most of the
readers of these volumes will know that - means less by, or, without; + nro^-e by, or. ifi
addition to; = equal to, or, the same as. — E,i.
Prometheus of ^schylus 331
and more distinct view of this singular people, and of the
place which they occupied in the history of the world, and
the great scheme of divine providence, than I have hitherto
seen, — or rather let me say, than it appears to me possible
to give by any other process.
The present Essay, however, I devote to the purpose of
removing, or at least invalidating, one objection that I may
reasonably anticipate, and which may be conveyed in the
following question : — What proof have you of the fact of
any connection between the Greek drama, and either the
mysteries, or the philosophy, of Greece ? What proof that
it was the office of the tragic poet, under a disguise of the
sacerdotal religion, mixed with the legendary or popular
belief, to reveal as much of the mysteries interpreted by
philosophy, as would counteract the demoralizing effects
of the state religion, without compromising the tranquillity
of the state itself, or weakening that paramount reverence,
without which a republic, (such, I mean, as the republics of
ancient Greece were) could not exist ?
I know no better way in which I can reply to this objec-
tion, than by giving, as my proof and instance, the Pro-
metheus of iEschylus, accompanied with an exposition of
what I believe to be the intention of the poet, and the
mythic import of the work ; of which it may be truly said,
that it is more properly tragedy itself in the plenitude of the
idea, than a particular tragic poem ; and as a preface to
this exposition, and for the twin purpose of rendering it
intelligible, and of explaining its connection with the whole
scheme of my Essays, I entreat permission to insert a
quotation from a work of my own, which has indeed been in
print for many years, but which few of my auditors will
probably have heard of, and still fewer, if any, have read.
" As the representative of the youth and approaching
manhood of the human intellect we have ancient Greece,
from Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus, and the other mythological
bards, or, perhaps, the brotherhoods impersonated under
those names, to the time when the republics lost their
independence, and their learned men sank into copyists of,
and commentators on, the works of their forefathers. That
we include these as educated under a distinct providential,
though not miraculous, dispensation, will surprise no one,
who reflects, that in whatever has a permanent operation
on the destinies and intellectual condition of mankind at
332 Idea of the
large, — that in all which has been manifestly employed as
a co-agent in the mightiest revolution of the moral world,
the propagation of the Gospel, and in the intellectual pro-
gress of mankind in the restoration of philosophy, science,
and the ingenuous arts — it were irreligion not to acknow-
ledge the hand of divine providence. The periods, too,
join on to each other. The earliest Greeks took up the
religious and lyrical poetry of the Hebrews ; and the
schools of the prophets were, however partially and imper-
fectly, represented by the mysteries derived through the
corrupt channel of the Phoenicians ! With these secret
schools of physiological theology, the mythical poets were
doubtless in connexion, and it was these schools which pre-
vented polytheism from producing all its natural barbariz-
ing effects. The mysteries and the mythical hymns and
paeans shaped themselves gradually into epic poetry and
history on the one hand, and into the ethical tragedy and
philosophy on the other. Under their protection, and that
of a youthful liberty, secretly controlled by a species of
internal theocracy, the sciences, and the sterner kinds of
the fine arts, that is, architecture and statuary, grew up
together, followed, indeed, by painting, but a statuesque,
and austerely idealized, painting, which did not degenerate
into mere copies of the sense, till the process for which
Greece existed had been completed." ^
The Greeks alone brought forth philosophy in the proper
and contra-distinguishable sense of the term, which we may
compare to the coronation medal with its symbolic char-
acters, as contrasted with the coins, issued under the same
sovereign, current in the market. In the primary sense,
philosophy had for its aim and proper subject the rd
mpi cLpyZ^v, de originihus rermn, as far as man proposes to
discover the same in and by the pure reason alone. This,
I say, was the offspring of Greece, and elsewhere adopted
only. The pre-disposition appears in their earliest poetry.
The first object (or subject matter) of Greek philosophiz-
ing was in some measure philosophy itself ; — not, indeed,
as a product, but as the producing power — the produc-
tivity. Great minds turned inward on the fact of the
diversity between man and beast ; a superiority of kind in
addition to that of degree ; the latter, that is, the difference
in degree comprehending the more enlarged sphere and the
1 Friend, III. Essay 9.
Prometheus of ^schylus 333
multifold application of faculties common to man and
brute animals ; — even this being in great measure a trans-
fusion from the former, namely, from the superiority in
kind ; — for only by its co-existence with reason, free-will,
self-consciousness, the contra-distinguishing attributes of
man, does the instinctive intelligence manifested in the ant,
the dog, the elephant, &c. become human understanding.
It is a truth with which HeracUtus, the senior, but yet
contemporary, of ^schylus, appears, from the few genuine
fragments of his writings that are yet extant, to have been
deeply impressed, — that the mere understanding in man,
considered as the power of adapting means to immediate
purposes, differs, indeed, from the intelligence displayed by
other animals, and not in degree only ; but yet does not
differ by any excellence which it derives from itself, or by
any inherent diversity, but solely in consequence of a
combination with far higher powers of a diverse kind in
one and the same subject.
Long before the entire separation of metaphysics from
poetry, that is, while yet poesy, in all its several species
of verse, music, statuary, &c. continued mythic ; — while
yet poetry remained the union of the sensuous and the
philosophic mind ; — the efficient presence of the latter in
the synthesis of the two, had manifested itself in the
sublime mythus 'rrspi ysvsfficug Tou i/eD h di'^poj'roTg, concern-
ing the genesis, or birth of the vou? or reason in man.
This the most venerable, and perhaps the most ancient, of
Grecian mythi, is a philosopheme, the very same in subject
matter with the earliest record of the Hebrews, but most
characteristically different in tone and conception ; — for
the patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism,
was necessarily personal ; and the doctrines of a faith,
the first ground of which and the primary enunciation,
is the eternal I am, must be in part historic and must
assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is
a narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as
the origin of the fact.
That a profound truth — a truth that is, indeed, the
grand and indispensable condition of all moral responsi-
bility— is involved in this characteristic of the sacred
narrative, I am not alone persuaded, but distinctly aware.
This, however, does not preclude us from seeing, nay, as
an additional mark of the wisdom that inspired the sacred
334 Idea of the
historian, it rather supplies a motive to us, impels and
authorizes us, to see, in the form of the vehicle of the truth,
an accommodation to the then childhood of the human
race. Under this impression we may, I trust, safely con-
sider the narration, — introduced, as it is here introduced,
for the purpose of explaining a mere work of the unaided
mind of man by comparison, — as an sVog 'upoy'kvc^ixhv^ —
and as such (apparently, I mean, not actually) a synthesis
of poesy and philosophy, characteristic of the childhood
of nations.
In the Greek we see already the dawn of approaching
manhood. The substance, the stuff, is philosophy ; the
form only is poetry. The Prometheus is a philosophema
ravrriycpixhv, — the tree of knowledge of good and evil, —
an allegory, a cr^cra/^gy.aa, though the noblest and the
most pregnant of its kind.
The generation of the koD^, or pure reason in man. i.
It was superadded or infused, a supra to mark that it
was no mere evolution of the animal basis ; — that it could
not have grown out of the other faculties of man, his life,
sense, understanding, as the flower grows out of the stem,
having pre-existed potentially in the seed : 2. The voZg,
or fire, was 'stolen,' — to mark its hetero — or rather its
a/^-geneity, that is, its diversity, its difference in kind,
from the faculties which are common to man with the
nobler animals : 3. And stolen 'from Heaven,' — to mark
its superiority in kind, as well as its essential diversity :
4. And it was a 'spark,' — to mark that it is not subject
to any modifying reaction from that on which it immedi-
ately acts ; that it suffers no change, and receives no
accession, from the inferior, but multiplies itself by con-
version, without being alloyed by, or amalgamated with,
that which it potentiates, ennobles, and transmutes : 5.
And lastly, (in order to imply the homogeneity of the
donor and of the gift) it was stolen by a 'god,' and a god
of the race before the dynasty of Jove, — Jove the binder
of reluctant powers, the coercer and entrancer of free
spirits under the fetters of shape, and mass, and passive
mobility ; but likewise by a god of the same race and
essence with Jove, and linked of yore in closest and
friendhest intimacy with him. This, to mark the pre-
existence, in order of thought, of the nous, as spiritual,
both to the objects of sense, and to their products, formed
Prometheus of ^Eschylus 335
as it were, by the precipitation, or, if I may dare adopt
the bold language of Leibnitz, by a coagulation of spirit.^
In other words this derivation of the spark from above,
and from a god anterior to the Jovial dynasty — (that is,
to the submersion of spirits in material forms), — was
intended to mark the transcendency of the nous, the con-
tra-distinctive faculty of man, as timeless, a-/^pov6v n, and,
in this negative sense, eternal. It signified, I say, its
superiority to, and its diversity from, all things that
subsist in space and time, nay, even those which, though
spaceless, yet partake of time, namely, souls or under-
standings. For the soul, or understanding, if it be defined
physiologically as the principle of sensibility, irritability,
and growth, together with the functions of the organs,
which are at once the representatives and the instruments
of these, must be considered in genere, though not in
degree or dignity, common to man and the inferior animals.
It was the spirit, the nous, which man alone possessed.
And I must be permitted to suggest that this notion
deserves some respect, were it only that it can shew a
semblance, at least, of sanction from a far higher authority.
The Greeks agreed with the cosmogonies of the East
in deriving all sensible forms from the indistinguishable.
The latter we find designated as the rb aaopipov^ the
vdup Tpoxoa/MKov, the p(;ao5 as, the essentially unintelligible,
yet necessarily presumed, basis or sub-position of all
positions. That it is, scientifically considered, an indis-
pensable idea for the human mind, just as the mathe-
matical point, &c. for the geometrician ; — of this the
various systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from
Burnet to La Place, afford strong presumption. As an
idea, it must be interpreted as a striving of the mind to
distinguish being from existence, — or potential being, the
ground of being containing the possibility of existence,
from being actualized. In the language of the mysteries,
it was the esurience, the -ro^os or desideratum, the unfuelled
fire, the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the
origin and interpretation of whose name is found in the
Hebrew root signifying hunger, and thence capacity. It
1 Schelling ascribes this expression, which I have not been able to find in the works
of Leibnitz, to Hemsterhuis: " When Leibnitz," says he, "calls matter the sleep-state
of the Monads, or when Hemsterhuis calls it curdled spirit,— den g^gronnenen Geist.—
!n fact, matter is no other than spirit contemplated in the equilibrium of its activities."
Transl. Transfc. Ideal, p. 190. S. C.
33^ Idea of the
was, in short, an effort to represent the universal ground
of all differences distinct or opposite, but in relation to
which all antithesis as well as all antitheta, existed only
potentially. This was the container and withholder,
(such is the primitive sense of the Hebrew word rendered
darkness (Gen. i. 2)) out of which light, that is, the lux
lucifica, as distinguished from hunen seu lux phcanomenalis ,
was produced ; — say, rather, that which, producing itself
into light as the one pole or antagonist power, remained
in the other pole as darkness, that is, gravity, or the
principle of mass, or wholeness without distinction of
parts.
And here the pecuHar, the philosophic, genius of Greece
began its foetal throb. Here it individualized itself in
contra-distinction from the Hebrew archology, on the
one side, and from the Phoenician, on the other. The
Phoenician confounded the indistinguishable with the
absolute, the Alpha and Omega, the ineffable causa sui.
It confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is,
unintelligible from defect of the subject, with the absolute
identity above all intellect, that is, transcending com-
prehension by the plenitude of its excellence. With the
Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony and
vice ve-rsa. Hence, too, flowed their theurgic rites, their
magic, their worship (cultus et apotheosis) of the plastic
forces, chemical and vital, and these, or their notions
respecting these, formed the hidden meaning, the soul, as
it were, of which the popular and civil worship was the
body with its drapery.
The Hebrew wisdom imperatively asserts an unbeginning
creative One, who neither became the world ; nor is the
world eternally ; nor made the world out of himself by
emanation, or evolution ; — but who willed it, and it was !
Ta u9ia lyUiro, xa/ iyivsro x6,oq, — and this chaos, the
eternal will, by the spirit and the word, or express fiat, —
again acting as the impregnant, distinctive, and ordonnant
power, — enabled to become a world — xo<r,as7(rt5a/. So
must it be when a religion, that shall preclude superstition
on the one hand, and brute indifference on the other, is
to be true for the meditative sage, yet intelligible, or at
least apprehensible, for all but the fools in heart.
The Greek philosopheme, preser\^ed for us in the iEschy-
lean Prometheus, stands midway betwixt both, yet is
Prometheus of ^schylus 337
distinct in kind from either. With the Hebrew or purer
Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z, — (I take these letters in their
alegebraic appHcation) — an indeterminate Elohim, ante-
cedent to the matter of the world, u>.>j a-Koaixog — no less
than to the oXrj %ixoG[Mnfji,h7i. In this point, likewise, the
Greek accorded with the Semitic, and differed from the
Phoenician — that it held the antecedent X Y Z to be super-
sensuous and divine. But on the other hand, it coincides
with the Phoenician in considering this antecedent ground
of corporeal matter, — ruv GMfMarov xa/ reD crw^ar/xoD, — not so
properly the cause of the latter, as the occasion and the
still continuing substance. Materia suhstat adhuc. The
corporeal was supposed co-essential with the antecedent of
its corporeity. Matter, as distinguished from body, was a
non ens, a simple apparition, id quod mere videtiir ; but to
body the elder physico-theology of the Greeks allowed a
participation in entity. It was spiritus ipse, oppressus,
dormiens, et diversis modis somnians. In short, body was
the productive power suspended, and as it were, quenched
in the product. This may be rendered plainer by reflecting,
that, in the pure Semitic scheme there are four terms intro-
duced in the solution of the problem, i. the beginning, self-
sufficing, and immutable Creator ; 2. the antecedent night
as the identity, or including germ, of the light and dark-
ness, that is, gravity ; 3. the chaos ; and 4. the material
world resulting from the powers communicated by the
divine flat. In the Phoenician scheme there are in
fact but two — a self-organizing chaos, and the omniform
nature as the result. In the Greek scheme we have three
terms, i. the hyle jXjj, which holds the place of the chaos,
or the waters, in the true system ; 2. ra (Tw/^ara, answering
to the Mosaic heaven and earth ; and 3. the Saturnian ;<^/'o^o/
uTipyjo'jioi, — which answer to the antecedent darkness of
the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder physico-theo-
logists attributed a self-polarizing power — a natnra gemina
qucB fit et facit, agit et patitur. In other words, the Elohim
of the Greeks were still but a natnra deorum, to km, in which
a vague plurality adhered ; or if any unity was imagined,
it was not personal — not a unity of excellence, but simply
an expression of the negative — that which was to pass, but
whicli had not yet passed, into distinct form.
All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading, —
perhaps fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and
338 Idea of the
prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it
can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I
know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the
whole cypher of the ^schylean mythology. The sum
stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this : First, what
Moses appropriated to the chaos itself : what Moses made
passive and a materia subjecta et lucis et tenehrarum, the
containing vpods/j.evov of the thesis and antithesis ; — this the
Greek placed anterior to the chaos ; — the chaos itself being
the struggle between the hyper chrojiia, the Idiat 'n-povo/j^oi, as
the unevolved, unproduced, prothesis, of which ihia xa/ v6[j.og
— (idea and law) — are the thesis and antithesis. (I use the
word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a point
elongating itself to a bi-polar line.) Secondly, what Moses
establishes, not merely as a transcendant Monas, but as
an individual 'E^dg likewise ; — this the Greek took as a
harmony, dsoi d&dvaroi, to dim, as distinguished from o khg
— or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pytha-
goreans and cabalists numen numerantis ; and these are to
be contemplated as the identity.
Now according to the Greek philosopheme or mythiis, in
these, or in this identity, there arose a war, schism, or
division, that is, a polarization into thesis and antithesis.
In consequence of this schism in the rh dsTov, the thesis be-
comes nomos, or law, and the antithesis becomes idea, but
so that the nomos is nomos, because, and only because, the
idea is idea : the nomos is not idea, only because the idea
has not become nomos. And this not must be heedfully
borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this
most profound and pregnant philosopheme. The nomos
is essentially idea, but existentially it is idea, suhstans, that
is, id quod stat subtus, understanding sensu generalissimo.
The idea, which now is no longer idea, has substantiated
itself, become real as opposed to idea, and is henceforward,
therefore, substans in substantiate. The first product of its
energy is the thing itself : ipsa se posuit et jam facta est ens
positum. Still, however, its productive energy is not
exhausted in this product, but overflows, or is effluent, as
the specific forces, properties, faculties, of the product. It
reappears, in short, in the body, as the function of the body.
As a sufficient illustration, though it cannot be offered as a
perfect instance, take the followinp^.
'In the world we see every where evidences of a unity.
Prometheus of ^schylus 339
which the component parts are so far from explaining, that
they necessarily presuppose it as the cause and condition of
their existing as those parts, or even of their existing at all.
This antecedent unity, or cause and principle of each union,
it has since the time of Bacon and Kepler, been customary
to call a law. This crocus, for instance, or any flower the
reader may have in sight or choose to bring before his
fancy ; — that the root, stem, leaves, petals, &c. cohere as
one plant, is owing to an antecedent power or principle in
the seed, which existed before a single particle of the
matters that constitute the size and visibility of the crocus
had been attracted from the surrounding soil, air, and
moisture. Shall we turn to the seed ? Here too the same
necessity meets us, an antecedent unity (I speak not of the
parent plant, but of an agency antecedent in order of
operance, yet remaining present as the conservative and
reproductive power,) must here too be supposed. Analyze
the seed with the finest tools, and let the solar microscope
come in aid of your senses, — what do you find ? — means
and instruments, a wondrous fairy-tale of nature, maga-
zines of food, stores of various sorts, pipes, spiracles, de-
fences,— a house of many chambers, and the owner and
inhabitant invisible.' ^ Now, compare a plant thus con-
templated with an animal. In the former, the productive
energy exhausts itself, and as it were, sleeps in the product
or organismus — in its root, stem, foliage, blossoms, seed.
Its balsams, gums, resins, aromata, and all other bases of its
sensible qualities, are, it is v/ell known, mere excretions
from the vegetable, eliminated, as lifeless, from the actual
plant. The qualities are not its properties, but the pro-
perties, or far rather, the dispersion and volatilization of
these extruded and rejected bases. But in the animal it is
otherwise. Here the antecedent unity — the productive
and self-realizing idea — strives, with partial success to re-
emancipate itself from its product, and seeks once again to
become idea : vainly indeed : for in order to this, it must
be retrogressive, and it hath subjected itself to the fates,
the evolvers of the endless thread — to the stern necessity
of progression. Idea itself it cannot become, but it may in
long and graduated process, become an image, an ana-
logon, an anti-type of idea. And this s'/dcoXov may ap-
proximate to a perfect likeness. Quod est simile, nequit
1 Aids to Reflection. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. Aphorism VI. £d.
340 Idea of the
esse idem. Thus, in the lower animals, we see this process
of emancipation commence with the intermediate link, or
that which forms the transition from properties to faculties,
namely, with sensation. Then the faculties of sense,
locomotion, construction, as, for instance, webs, hives,
nests, &c. Then the functions ; as of instinct, memory,
fancy, instinctive intelligence, or understanding, as it exists
in the most intelligent animals. Thus the idea (hence-
forward no more idea, but irrecoverable by its own fatal
act) commences the process of its own transmutation, as
substans in suhstantiato , as the enteleche, or the vis for-
matrix, and it finishes the process as substans e suhstantiato,
that is, as the understanding.
If, for the purpose of elucidating this process, I might be
allowed to imitate the symbolic language of the algebraists,
and thus to regard the successive steps of the process as so
many powers and dignities of the nomos or law, the scheme
would be represented thus : —
Nomos^ = Product : N^ = Property : N^ = Faculty :
N^ = Function : N-'^ = Understanding ; —
which is, indeed, in one sense, itself a nomos, inasmuch as it
is the index of the nomos, as well as its highest function ;
but, like the hand of a watch, it is likewise a nomizomenon.
It is a verb, but still a verb passive.
On the other hand, idea is so far co-essential with nomos,
that by its co-existence — (not confluence) — with the nomos
sv vo,u.i^ofMsvoig (with the organismus and its faculties and func-
tions in the man,) it becomes itself a nomos. But, observe,
a nomos auto nomos, or containing its law in itself likewise ;
— even as the nomos produces for its hi'^^hest product the
understanding, so the idea, in its opposition and, of course,
its correspondence to the nomos, begets in itself an analogon
to product ; and this is self-consciousness. But as the
product can never become idea, so neither can the idea (if
it is to remain idea) become or generate a distinct product.
This analogon of product is to be itself ; but were it indeed
and substantially a product, it would cease to be self. It
would be an object for a subject, not (as it is and must be)
an object that is its own subject, and vice versa ; a concep-
tion which, if the uncombining and infusile genius of our
language allowed it, might be expressed by the term sub-
Prometheus of ^schylus 341
ject-object. Now, idea, taken in indissoluble connection
with this analogon of product is mind, that which knows
itself, and the existence of which may be inferred, but
cannot appear or become a phenomenon.
By the benignity of Providence, the truths of most im-
portance in themselves, and which it most concerns us to
know, are familiar to us, even from childhood. Well for us
if we do not abuse this privilege, and mistake the famili-
arity of words which convey these truths, for a clear under-
standing of the truths themselves ! If the preceding dis-
quisition, with all its subtlety and all its obscurity, should
answer no other purpose, it will still have been neither
purposeless, nor devoid of utility, should it only lead us to
sympathize with the strivings of the human intellect,
awakened to the infinite importance of the inward oracle
yvudi ffsavro^ — and almost instinctively shaping its course
of search in conformity with the Platonic intimation : —
v^i/y^c (pliffiv d^icijg Xoyov y^aravorjGrn o'in dvvarov fivai, a\'fj
TTjg Tou oXov <pu6eu; ; but be this as it may, the ground-
work of the iEschylean mythus is laid in the definition of
idea and law, as correlatives that mutually interpret each
the other ; — an idea, with the adequate power of realizing
itself being a law, and a law considered abstractedly from,
or in the absence of, the power of manifesting itself in its
appropriate product being an idea. Whether this be true
philosophy, is not the question. The school of Aristotle
would, of course, deny, the Platonic affirm it ; for in this
consists the difference of the two schools. Both acknow-
ledge ideas as distinct from the mere generalizations from
objects of sense : both would define an idea as an ens
rationale, to which there can be no adequate correspondent
in sensible experience. But, according to Aristotle, ideas
are regulative only, and exist only as functions of the
mind : — according to Plato, they are constitutive likewise,
and one in essence with the power and life of nature ; —
iv y.oyu) ^(H7i i]v^ xai i] ^oiTi rjv to (pojg tuv av&pojrruv. And
this I cLSsert, was the philosophy of the mythic poets,
who, like ^schylus, adapted the secret doctrines of the
mysteries as the (not always safely disguised) antidote to
the debasing influences of the religion of the state.
But to return and conclude this preliminary explanation.
We have only to substitute the term will, and the term con-
stitutive power, for nomos or law, and the process is the
342 Idea of the
same. Permit me to represent the identity or prothesis by
the letter Z and the thesis and antithesis by X and Y re-
spectively. Then I say X by not being Y, but in con- i
sequence of being the correlative opposite of Y, is will ;
and Y, by not being X, but the correlative and opposite of !
X, is nature, — natura naturans, vC/j^og (p'jgixog. Hence we
may see the necessity of contemplating the idea now as
identical with the reason, and now as one with the will, and '
now as both in one, in which last case I shall, for conveni-
ence sake, employ the term Nous, the rational will, the
practical reason.
We are now out of the holy jungle of transcendental
metaphysics ; if indeed, the reader's patience shall have
had strength and persistency enough to allow me to
exclaim —
Ivimus ambo
Per densas umbras : at tenet umbra Deum.
Not that I regard the foregoing as articles of faith, or as all
true ; — I have implied the contrary by contrasting it with,
at least, by shewing its disparateness from, the Mosaic,
which, bona fide, I do regard as the truth. But I believe
there is much, and profound, truth in it, supra captum
'^t'koff6(puv, qui non agnoscunt divinum, ideoque nee naturam,
nisi nomine, agnoscunt; sed res cunctas ex sensuali cor-
poreo cogitant, quibus hac ex causa interiora clausa manent,
et simul cum illis exteriora qucB proxima interioribus sunt !
And with no less confidence do I believe that the positions
above given, true or false, are contained in the Promethean
my thus.
In this my thus, Jove is the impersonated representation
or symbol of the nomos — Jupiter est quodcunque vides. He
is the mejts agitans molem, but at the same time, the molem
corpoream ponens et constituens. And so far the Greek
philosopheme does not differ essentially from the cosmo-
theism, or identification of God with the universe, in which
consisted the first apostacy of mankind after the flood,
when they combined to raise a temple to the heavens, and
which is still the favored religion of the Chinese. Pro-
metheus, in like manner, is the impersonated representative
of Idea, or of the same power as Jove, but contemplated as
independent and not immersed in the product, — as law
minus the productive energy. As such it is next to be
Prometheus of ^schylus 343
seen what the several significances of each must or may be
according to the philosophic conception ; and of which
significances, therefore, should we find in the philosopheme
a correspondent to each, we shall be entitled to assert that
such are the meanings of the fable. And first of Jove : —
Jove represents i. Nomos generally, as opposed to Idea or
Nous : 2. Nomos archinomos, now as the father, now as the
sovereign, and now as the includer and representative of
the foV*/ o-jpduot -/.oGiMiKoi, or dii majores, who, had joined or
come over to Jove in the first schism : 3. Nomos da/M^rjTrn —
the subjugator of the spirits, of the id's at •zpovtfj.oi^ who, thus
subjugated, became voi^oi ■j-7:o\'6!J.tot vTroff'xovdoi, Titanes pacati,
dii minores, that is, the elements considered as powers re-
duced to obedience under yet higher powers than them-
selves : 4. Nomos croX/r/xog, law in the Pauline sense, vo/iog
d/\.XoTf>i6vo/xog in antithesis to vo/u.og avTovo/MOf.
COROLLARY.
It is in this sense that Jove's jealous, ever-quarrelsome,
spouse represents the political sacerdotal cultus, the church,
in short, of republican paganism ; — a church by law estab-
lished for the mere purposes of the particular state, un-
ennobled by the consciousness of instrumentality to higher
purposes ; — at once unenlightened and unchecked by
revelation. Most gratefully ought we to acknowledge
that since the completion of our constitution in 1688,
we may, with unflattering truth, elucidate the spirit and
character of such a church by the contrast of the institution,
to which England owes the larger portion of its superiority
in that, in which alone superiority is an unmixed blessing,
— the diffused cultivation of its inhabitants. But pre-
viously to this period, I shall offend no enlightened man
if I say without distinction of parties — intra muros pec-
catur et extra ; — that the history of Christendom presents
us with too many illustrations of this Junonian jealousy,
this factious harassing of the sovereign power as soon as
the latter betrayed any symptoms of a disposition to
its true policy, namely, to privilege and perpetuate that
which is best, — to tolerate the tolerable, — and to restrain
none but those who would restrain all, and subjugate even
344 Idea of the
the state itself. But while truth extorts this confession,
it, at the same time, requires that it should be accompanied
by an avowal of the fact, that the spirit is a rehc of Pagan-
ism ; and with a bitter smile would an iEschylus or a
Plato in the shades, listen to a Gibbon or a Hume vaunting
the mild and tolerant spirit of the state religions of ancient
Greece or Rome. Here we have the sense of Jove's in-
trigues with Europa, lo, &c. whom the god, in his own
nature a general lover, had successively taken under his
protection. And here, too, see the full appropriateness of Ij
this part of the mythus, in which symbol fades away into
allegory, but yet in reference to the working cause, as
grounded in humanity, and always existing either actually
or potentially, and thus never ceases wholly to be a symbol
or tautegory.
Prometheus represents, i. sensii generali, Idea '7rp6'JO[j/)g^
and in this sense he is a &io; 6/a,6f i;Xog, a fellow-tribesman
both of the dii ma j ores, with Jove at their head, and of the
Titans or dii pacati : 2. He represents Idea (pi\miMi,
yaiMhiUrr^g ; and in this sense the former friend and
counsellor of Jove or ISlous uranius : 3. Aoyog ^iXdvdpctj'Troc,
the divine humanity, the humane God, who retained
unseen, kept back, or (in the catachresis characteristic
of the Phoenicio-Grecian mythology) stole, a portion or
ignicida from the living spirit of law, which remained
with the celestial gods unexpended h r^j voiulicoai.
He gave that which, according to the whole analogy of
things, should have existed either as pure divinity, the
sole property and birthright of the Dii Joviales, the
Uranions, or was conceded to inferior beings as a suhstans
in substantiato. This spark divine Prometheus gave to
an elect, a favored animal, not as a suhstans or understand-
ing, commensurate with, and confined by, the constitution
and conditions of this particular organism, but as aliquid
superstans, liberum, non suhactiim, invictum, iynpacatum,
fhYi vo!J.tl^6iMiv(iv. This gift, by which we are to understand
reason theoretical and practical, was therefore a vofiog
ahrovoiMo- — unapproachable and unmodiiiable by the
animal basis — that is, by the pre-existing suhstans with
its products, the animal organismus with its faculties and
functions ; but yet endowed with the power of potentiat-
ing, ennobling, and prescribing to, the substance ; and
hence, therefore, a vo/j^^g vofMOTs/dvig, lex legisuada : 4. By
Prometheus of ^schylus 345
a transition, ordinary even in allegory, and appropriate
to mythic symbol, but especially significant in the present
case — the transition, I mean, from the giver to the gift —
the giver, in very truth, being the gift, 'whence the soul
receives reason ; and reason is her being,' says our Milton.
Reason is from God, and God is reason, mens ipsissima.
5. Prometheus represents. Nous h av^pdj-Trw — voO?
aymi6Tric. Thus contemplated, the Nous is of necessity,
powerless ; for aU power, that is, productivity, or pro-
ductive energy, is in Law, that is, vofMog aWorpiovoiJjog : ^
still, however, the Idea in the Law, the numerus numerans
become vof/^og, is the principle of the Law ; and if with
Law dwells power, so with the knowledge or the Idea
scientialis of the Law, dwells prophecy and foresight. A
perfect astronomical time-piece in relation to the motions
of the heavenly bodies, or the magnet in the mariner's
compass in relation to the magnetism of the earth, is a
sufficient illustration.
6. Both voiMog and Idea (or Nous) are the verbum ; but,
as in the former, it is verbum fiat 'the Word of the Lord,'
— in the latter it must be the verbum fiet or, 'the Word
of the Lord in the mouth of the prophet.' Pari argumento,
as the knowledge is therefore not power, the power is
not knowledge. The ^ofj^og, the ZsD^ Travroxpdrojp, seeks
to learn, and, as it were, to wrest the secret, the hateful
secret, of his own fate, namely, the transitoriness adherent
to all antithesis ; for the identity or the absolute is alone
eternal. This secret Jove would extort from the Noiis,
or Prometheus, which is the sixth representment of
Prometheus.
7. Introduce but the least of real as opposed to ideal,
the least speck of positive existence, even though it were
but the mote in a sunbeam, into the sciential contemplamen
or theorem, and it ceases to be science. Ratio desinit esse
pura ratio et fit discursus, stat subter et fU u'Trohrixov : —
non superstat. The Nous is bound to a rock, the im-
movable firmness of which is indissolubly connected with
its barrenness, its non-productivity. Were it productive
it would be Nomos ; but it is Nous, because it is not
Nomos.
1 I scarcely need say, that I use the word &WoTpi6vo/xos as a participle active, as
exercising law on another, not as rectivLng law from another, though the latter is the
classical force (I suppose) of the word.
346 Idea of the
8. Solitary d/3arw iv IpniJ^ia. Now I say that the Nous,
notwithstanding its diversity from the Nomizomeni, is
yet, relatively to their supposed original essence, rraat
roTg voiMiZ^oixsMoig ravroyiv^g, of the same race or radix :
though in another sense, namely, in relation to the -rav
h?bv — the pantheistic Elohim, it is conceived anterior
to the schism, and to the conquest and enthronization
of Jove who succeeded. Hence the Prometheus of the
great tragedian is khg 6-jyyivr,g. The kindred deities
come to him, some to soothe, to condole ; others to give
weak, yet friendly, counsels of submission ; others to
tempt, or insult. The most prominent of the latter, and
the most odious to the imprisoned and insulated Nous,
is Hermes, the impersonation of interest with the entranc-
ing and serpentine Caduceus, and, as interest or motives
intervening between the reason and its immediate self-
determinations, with the antipathies to the vo/j^og avrovo^u^og.
The Hermxcs impersonates the eloquence of cupidity, the
cajolement of power regnant ; and in a larger sense,
custom, the irrational in language, p^iMara ra priroptxa, the
fluent, from pzM — the rhetorical in opposition to A070/, ra
vorird. But, primarily, the Hermes is the symbol of
interest. He is the messenger, the inter-nuncio, in the
low but expressive phrase, the go-between, to beguile
or insult. And for the other visitors of Prometheus, the
elementary powers, or spirits of the elements, Titanes
pacati, hoi -jriovoixioi, vassal potentates, and their solicita-
tions, the noblest interpretation will be given, if I repeat
the lines of our great contemporary poet : —
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind.
And e'en with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man
Forget the glories he hath known
And that imperial palace whence he came : —
Wordsworth.
which exquisite language is prefigured in coarser clay,
indeed, and with a less lofty spirit, but yet excellently
in their kind, and even more fortunately for the illustration
and ornament of the present commentary, in the fifth,
sixth, and seventh stanzas of Dr. Henry More's poem on
the Pre-existence of the Soul : —
Prometheus of ^schylus 347
Thus groping after our own center's near
And proper substance, we grew dark, contract,
Swallow' d up of earthly life ! Ne what we were
Of old, thro' ignorance can we detect.
Like noble babe, by fate or friends' neglect
Left to the care of sorry salvage wight.
Grown up to manly years cannot conject
His own true parentage, nor read aright
What father him begot, what womb him brought to light.
So we, as stranger infants elsewhere born.
Cannot divine from what spring we did flow ;
Ne dare these base alliances to scorn,
Nor lift ourselves a whit from hence below ;
Ne strive our parentage again to know,
Ne dream we once of any other stock.
Since foster' d upon Rhea's ^ knees we grow,
In Satyrs' arms with many a mow and mock
Oft danced ; and hairy Pan our cradle oft hath rock'd !
But Pan nor Rhea be our parentage !
We been the offspring of the all seeing Nous, &c.
To express the supersensual character of the reason, its
ibstraction from sensation, we find the Prometheus arsp-ryi,
—while in the yearnings accompanied with the remorse
ncident to, and only possible in consequence of the Nous
Deing, the rational, self-conscious, and therefore responsible
iVill, he is yvri diaKvato/j^syog.
If to these contemplations we add the control and des-
potism exercised on the free reason by Jupiter in his syrn-
Dolical character, as v6,(/.og croX/r/xog ; — by custom (Hermes) ;
Dy necessity, /5/a jcai xparhg ; — by the mechanic arts and
DOwers, avyysvsTc T'jj ^ouj though they are, and which are
;ymbolized in Hephaistos, — we shall see at once the pro-
priety of the title, Prometheus, bia,'MU)Trig.
9. Nature, or Zeus as the voiJ^og h i/o/x/^o/xbo/{, knows herself
)nly, can only come to a knowledge of herself, in man I
\nd even in man, only as man is supernatural, above nature,
loetic. But this knowledge man refuses to communicate ;
;hat is, the human understanding alone is at once self-
conscious and conscious of nature. And this high pre-
ogative it owes exclusively to its being an assessor of the
1 Rhea (from pioiy/luo), that is, the earth as the transitory, the ever-flowing nature,
he flux and sum oi phenomena, or objects of the outward sense, in contradistinction
roiTi the earth as Vesta, as the firmamcntal law that sustains and disposes the apparent
.rorld ! The Satyrs represent the sports and appetences of the sensuous nature
<Ppbvt)y.a o-apK6s)—Pa.n, or the total life of the earth, the presence of all in each, the
niversal organistrtus of bodies and bodily energy.
1^
348 Idea of the Prometheus of ^schylusji
reason. Yet even the human understanding in its height|j|
of place seeks vainly to appropriate the ideas of the pure:;?
reason, which it can only represent by idola. Here, then, ;
the Nous stands as Prometheus dvT/-TaXog,renuens — in hostileb i
opposition to Jupiter Inquisitor.
ID. Yet finally, against the obstacles and even under the
fostering influences of the Nomos, roZ vo!J.ifj.ov, a son of Jove
himself, but a descendant from lo, the mundane religion, as
contra-distinguished from the sacerdotal cultus, or religion
of the state, an Alcides Liberator will arise, and the Nous
or divine principle in man, will be Prometheus iXsvhpdj/xsvog.
Did my limits or time permit me to trace the persecu-
tions, wanderings, and migrations of the lo, the mundane
religion, through the whole map marked out by the tragic
poet, the coincidences would bring the truth, the unarbit-
rariness, of the preceding exposition as near to demonstra-
tion as can rationally be required on a question of history,
that must, for the greater part, be answered by combination
of scattered facts. But this part of my subject, together
with a particular exemplification of the light which my
theory throws both on the sense and the beauty of numerous
passages of this stupendous poem, I must reserve for a
future communication.
NOTES.i
V. 15. (pdpccyyi : — 'in a coomb, or combe.*
V. 17.
i^iopid^eip yap Trarpbs \6yovs ^api.
svupjd^siv, as the editor confesses, is a word introduced in-
to the text against the authority of all editions and manu-
scripts. I should prefer ggw^/a^g/t/, notwithstanding its being
a d-TraE, Xeyo/j.evov. The iv — seems to my tact too free and easy
a word ; — and yet our *to trifle with' appears the exact
meaning.
1 Written in Bp. Blomfield's editioD, aad communicated by Mr. Gary. £d.
I
Mysteries in Greek Tragedy 349
SUMMARY OF AN ESSAY
ON THE FUNDAMENTAL POSITION OF THE MYSTERIES IN
RELATION TO GREEK TRAGEDY.
The Position, to tlie establishment of which Mr. Coleridge
regards his essay as the Prolegomena, is : that the Greek
Tragedy stood in th«^ same relation to the Mysteries, as
the Epic Song, and the Fine Arts to the Temple Worship,
or the Religion of the State ; that the proper function of
the Tragic Poet was under the disguise of popular super-
stitions, and using the popular Mythology as his stuff and
drapery to communicate so much and no more of the
doctrines preserved in the Mysteries as should counteract
the demoralizing influence of the state religion, without
disturbing the public tranquillity, or weakening the re-
verence for the laws, or bringing into contempt the ancestral
and local usages and traditions on which the patriotism of
the citizens mainly rested, or that nationality in its in-
tensest form which was little less than essential in the con-
stitution of a Greek republic. To establish this position
it was necessary to explain the nature of these secret
doctrines, or at least the fundamental principles of the
faith and philosophy of Elensis and Samothrace. The
Samothracian M3/steries Mr. Coleridge supposes to have
been of Phoenician origin, and both these and the Elensi-
nian to have retained the religious belief of the more
ancient inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, prior to their
union with the Hellenes and the Egyptian colonies : that
it comprised sundry relics and fragments of the Patri-
archal Faith, the traditions historical and prophetic of the
Noetic Family, though corrupted and depraved by their
combination with the system of Pantheism, or the Worship
of the Universe as God [Jupiter est quodcunque vides) which
Mr. Coleridge contends to have been the first great Apostacy
of the Ancient World. But a religion founded on Pan-
theism, is of necessity a religion founded on philosophy,
i.e. an attempt to determine the origin of nature by the
unaided strength of the human intellect, however unsound
and false that philosophy may have been. And of this
the sacred books of the Indian Priests afford at once proof
and instance. Again : the earlier the date of any philo-
350 Mysteries in Greek Tragedy
sophic scheme, the more subjective will it be found — in
other words the earliest reasoners sought in their own
minds the form, measure and substance of all other power.
Abstracting from whatever was individual and accidental,
from whatever distinguished one human mind from
another, they fixed their attention exclusively on the char-
acters which belong to all rational beings, and which there-
fore they contemplated as mind itself, mind in its essence.
And however averse a scholar of the present day may be to
these first-fruits of speculative thought, as metaphysics, a
knowledge of their contents and distinctive tenets is indis-
pensable as history. At all events without this knov/ledge
he will in vain attempt to understand the spirit and genius
of the arts, institutions and governing minds of ancient
Greece. The difficulty of comprehending any scheme of
opinion is proportionate to its greater or lesser unlikeness
to the principles and modes of reasoning in which our own
minds have been formed. Where the difference is so great
as almost to amount to contrariety, no clearness in the
exhibition of the scheme will remove the sense, or rather,
perhaps the sensation, of strangeness from the hearer's
mind. Even beyond its utmost demerits it will appear
obscure, unreal, visionary. This difficulty the author anti-
cipates as an obstacle to the ready comprehension of the
first principles of the eldest philosophy, and the esoteric
doctrines of the Mysteries ; but to the necessity of over-
coming this the only obstacle, the thoughtful inquirer must
resign himself, as the condition under which alone he may
expect to solve a series of problems the most interesting of
all that the records of ancient history propose or suggest.
The fundamental position of the Mysteries, Mr. Coleridge
contends, consists in affirming that the productive powers
or laws of nature are essentially the same with the active
powers of the mind — in other words that mind, or Nous,
under which term they combine the universal attributes of
reason and will, is a principle of forms or patterns, endued
with a tendency to manifest itself as such ; and that this
mind or eternal essence exists in two modes of being.
Namely, either the form and the productive power, which
gives it outward and phoenomenal reality, are united in
equal and adequate proportions, in which case it is what
the eldest philosophers, and the moderns in imitation of
them, call a law of nature : or the form remaining the same.
Fragment of an Essay on Taste 351
but with the productive power in unequal or inadequate
proportions, whether the diminution be effected by the
mind's own act or original determination not to put forth
this inherent power, or whether the power have been re-
pressed, and as it were driven inward by the violence of a
superior force from without, — and in this case it was called
by the most Ancient School " Intelligible Number," by a
later School " Idea," or Mind — xar' s^oy^Tiv. To this position
a second was added, namely, that the form could not put
forth its productive or self -realizing power without ceasing
at the same moment to exist for itself, — i.e. to exist, and
know itself as existing. The formative power was as it
were alienated from itself and absorbed in the product. It
existed as an instinctive, essentially intelligential, but not
self-knowing, power. It was law, Jupiter, or (when con-
templated plurally) the Dii Majores. On the other hand,
to possess its own being consciously, the form must remain
single and only inwardly productive. To exist for itself,
it must continue to exist by itself. It must be an idea ;
but an idea in the primary sense of the term, the sense
attached to it by the oldest Italian School and by Plato, —
not as a synonyme of, but in contra-distinction from,
image, conception or notion : as a true entity of all en-
tities the most actual, of all essences the most essential.
Now on this Antithesis of idea and law, that is of mind
as an unproductive but self-knowing power, and of mind
as a productive but unconscious power, the whole religion
of pantheism as disclosed in the Mysteries turns, as on its
axis, bi-polar.
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON
TASTE. 1810.
The same arguments that decide the question, whether
taste has any fixed principles, may probably lead to a
determination of what those principles are. First then,
what is taste in its metaphorical sense, or, which will be
the easiest mode of arriving at the same solution, what
is there in the primary sense of the word, which may give
to its metaphorical meaning an import different from that
of sight or hearing, on the one hand, and of touch or
352 Fragment of an Essay on Taste
smell on the other ? And this question seems the more
natural, because in correct language we confine beauty,
the main subject of taste, to objects of sight and combina-
tions of sounds, and never, except sportively or by abuse
'of words, speak of a beautiful flavour, or a beautiful
scent.
Now the analysis of our senses in the commonest books
of anthrof)ology has drawn our attention to the distinction
between the perfectly organic, and the mixed senses ; —
the first presenting objects, as distinct from the perception ;
— the last as blending the perception with the sense of the
object. Our eyes and ears — (I am not now considering
what is or is not the case really, but only that of which we
are regularly conscious as appearances,) our eyes most
often appear to us perfect organs of the sentient principle,
and wholly in action, and our hearing so much more so
than the three other senses, and in all the ordinary exer-
tions of that sense, perhaps, equally so with the sight, that
all languages place them in one class, and express their
different modifications by nearly the same metaphors.
The three remaining senses appear in part passive, and
combine with the perception of the outward object a
distinct sense of our own life. Taste, therefore, as opposed
to vision and sound, will teach us to expect in its meta-
phorical use a certain reference of any given object to our
own being, and not merely a distinct notion of the object
as in itself, or in its independent properties. From the
sense of touch, on the other hand, it is distinguishable by
adding to this reference to our vital being some degree of
enjoyment, or the contrary, — some perceptible impulse
from pleasure or pain to complacency or dishke. The
sense of smell, indeed, might perhaps have furnished a
metaphor of the same import with that of taste ; but the
latter was naturally chosen by the majority of civilized
nations on account of the greater frequency, importance,
and dignity of its employment or exertion in human nature.
By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must
be supposed to mean an intellectual perception of any
object blended with a distinct reference to our own sensi-
bility of pain or pleasure, or, vice versa, a sense of enjoy-
ment or dislike co-instantaneously combined with, and
appearing to proceed from, some intellectual perception
of the object ; — intellectual perception, I say ; for other-
Fragment of an Essay on Taste 353
wise it would be a definition of taste in its primary rather
than in its metaphorical sense. Briefly, taste is a metaphor
taken from one of our mixed senses, and applied to objects
of the more purely organic senses, and of our moral sense,
when we would imply the co-existence of immediate personal
dislike or complacency. In this definition of taste, there-
fore, is involved the definition of fine arts, namely, as
being such the chief and discriminative purpose of which
it is to gratify the taste, — that is, not merely to connect,
but to combine and unite, a sense of immediate pleasure
in ourselves, with the perception of external arrangement.
The great question, therefore, whether taste in any one
of the fine arts has any fixed principle or ideal, will find
its solution in the ascertainment of two facts : — first,
whether in every determination of the taste concerning
any work of the fine arts, the individual does not, with
or even against the approbation of his general judgment,
involuntarily claim that all other minds ought to think
and feel the same ; whether the common expressions, *I
dare say I may be wrong, but that is my particular taste ;'
— are uttered as an oft'ering of courtesy, as a sacrifice to
the undoubted fact of our individual fallibility, or are
spoken with perfect sincerity, not only of the reason but
of the whole feeling, with the same entireness of mind and
heart, with which we concede a right to every person to
differ from another in his preference of bodily tastes and
flavours. If we should find ourselves compelled to deny
this, and to admit that, notwithstanding the consciousness
of our liability to error, and in spite of all those many
individual experiences which may have strengthened the
consciousness, each man does at the moment so far legislate
for aU men, as to believe of necessity that he is either right
or wrong, and that if it be right for him, it is universally
right, — we must then proceed to ascertain : — secondly,
whether the source of these phenomena is at all to be
found in those parts of our nature, in which each intellect
is representative of all, — and whether wholly, or partially.
No person of common reflection demands even in feeling,
that what tastes pleasant to him ought to produce the
same effect on all living beings ; but every man does and
must expect and demand the universal acquiescence of all
intelligent beings in every conviction of his understanding.
* ♦ * ♦ ♦
354 Fragment of an Essay on Beauty
FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON
BEAUTY. 1818.
The only necessary, but this the absolutely necessary,
pre-requisite to a full insight into the grounds of the
beauty in the objects of sight, is — the directing of the
attention to the action of those thoughts in our own mind
which are not consciously distinguished. Every man
may understand this, if he will but recall the state of his
feelings in endeavouring to recollect a name, which he is
quite sure that he remembers, though he cannot force
it back into consciousness. This region of unconscious
thoughts, oftentimes the more working the more indistinct
they are, may, in reference to this subject, be conceived
as forming an ascending scale from the most universal
associations of motion with the functions and passions of
hfe, — as when, on passing out of a crowded city into the
fields on a day in June, we describe the grass and king-
cups as nodding their heads and dancing in the breeze, —
up to the half perceived, yet not fixable, resemblance of
a form to some particular object of a diverse class, which
resemblance we need only increase but a little, to destroy,
or at least injure, its beauty-enhancing effect, and to make
it a fantastic intrusion of the accidental and the arbitrary,
and consequently a disturbance of the beautiful. This
might be abundantly exemplified and illustrated from the
paintings of Salvator Rosa.
I am now using the term beauty in its most comprehen-
sive sense, as including expression and artistic interest, —
that is, I consider not only the living balance, but likewise
all the accompaniments that even by disturbing are neces-
sary to the renewal and continuance of the balance. And
in this sense I proceed to show, that the beautiful in the
object may be referred to two elements, — lines and colours ;
the first belonging to the shapely [forma, formalis, for-
mosus), and in this, to the law, and the reason ; and the
second, to the lively, the free, the spontaneous, and the
self-justifying. As to lines, the rectilineal are in themselves
the lifeless, the determined ab extra, but still in immediate
union with the cycloidal. which are expressive of function.
The curve line is a modification of the force from without
Fragment of an Essay on Beauty 355
by the force from within, or the spontaneous. These
are not arbitrary symbols, but the language of nature,
universal and intuitive, by virtue of the law by which man
is impelled to explain visible motions by imaginary causa-
tive powers analogous to his own acts, as the Dryads,
Hamadryads, Naiads, &c.
The better way of applying these principles will be by a
brief and rapid sketch of the history of the fine arts, — in
which it will be found, that the beautiful in nature has been
appropriated to the works of man, just in proportion as the
state of the mind in the artists themselves approached to
the subjective beauty. Determine what predominance in
the minds of the men is preventive of the living balance of
excited faculties, and you will discover the exact counter-
part in the outward products. Egypt is an illustration
of this. Shapeliness is intellect without freedom ; but
colours are significant. The introduction of the arch is not
less an epoch in the fine than in the useful arts.
Order is beautiful arrangement without any purpose ad
extra ; — therefore there is a beauty of order, or order may
be contemplated exclusively as beauty.
The form given in every empirical intuition, — the stuff,
that is, the quality of the stuff, determines the agreeable :
but when a thing excites us to receive it in such and such a
mould, so that its exact correspondence to that mould is
what occupies the mind, — this is taste or the sense of beauty.
WTiether dishes full of painted wood or exquisite viands
were laid out on a table in the same arrangement, would be
indifferent to the taste, as in ladies patterns ; but surely the
one is far more agreeable than the other. Hence observe
the disinterestedness of all taste ; and hence also a sensual
perfection with intellect is occasionally possible without
moral feeling. So it may be in music and painting, but
not in poetry. How far it is a real preference of the refined
to the gross pleasures, is another question, upon the sup-
position that pleasure, in some form or other, is that alone
which determines men to the objects of the former ; —
whether experience does not show that if the latter were
equally in our power, occasioned no more trouble to enjoy,
and caused no more exhaustion of the power of enjoying
them by the enjoyment itself, we should in real practice
prefer the grosser pleasure. It is not, therefore, any ex-
cellence in the quality of the refined pleasures themselves.
356 Notes on Chapman's Homer
but the advantages and facilities in the means of enjoying
them, that give them the pre-eminence.
This is, of course, on the supposition of the absence of
all moral feeling. Suppose its presence, and then there
w'ill accrue an excellence even to the quality of the pleasures
themselves ; not only, however, of the refined, but also of
the grosser kinds, — inasmuch as a larger sweep of thoughts
will be associated with each enjoyment, and with each
thought will be associated a number of sensations ; and
so, consequently, each pleasure will become more the
pleasure of the whole being. This is one of the earthly
rewards of our being what we ought to be, but which would
be annihilated, if we attempted to be it for the sake of this
increased enjoyment. Indeed it is a contradiction to
suppose it. Yet this is the common argumentum in circitlo,
in which the eudaemonists flee and pursue.
NOTES ON CHAPMAN'S HOMER.
Extract of a Letter sent with the Volume} 1807.
Chapman I have sent in order that you might read the
Odyssey ; the Iliad is fine, but less equal in the translation,
as weU as less interesting in itself. What is stupidly said
of Shakspeare, is really true and appropriate of Chapman ;
mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties. Except-
ing his quaint epithets which he affects to render literally
from the Greek, a language above all others blest in the
" happy marriage of sweet words," and which in our lan-
guage are mere printer's compound epithets — such as
quaffed divine ]oy-in-the-heart-of -man-infusing wine, (the
undermarked is to be one word, because one sweet meUi-
fiuous word expresses it in Homer) ; — excepting this, it
has no look, no air, of a translation. It is as truly an
original poem as the Faery Queene ; — it will give you
smaU idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope's
epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome most anti-Homeric
Miltonism. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet, — as
Homer might have written had he Uved in England in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem,
in spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and harsh-
1 Coaununicated through Mr. Wordsworth. £d.
Notes on Chapman's Homer 357
nesses, which are, however, amply repaid by aknost un-
exampled sweetness and beauty of language, all over spirit
and feeling. In the main it is an English heroic poem, the
tale of which is borrowed from the Greek. The dedication
to the Iliad is a noble copy of verses, especially those
sublime lines beginning, —
O ! 'tis wondrous much
(Through nothing prisde) that the right vertuous touch
Of a well written soule, to vertue moves.
Nor haue we soules to purpose, if their loves
Of fitting objects be not so inflam'd.
How much then, were this kingdome's maine soul maim'd.
To want this great infiamer of all powers
That move in humane soules ! All realmes but yours,
Are honor' d with him ; and hold blest that state
That have his workes to reade and contemplate.
In which, humanitie to her height is raisde ;
Which all the world (yet, none enough) hath praisde.
Seas, earth, and heaven, he did in verse comprize ;
Out sung the Muses, and did equalise
Their king Apollo ; being so farre from cause
Of princes light thoughts, that their gravest lawes
May finde stuffe to be fashioned by his lines.
Through all the pompe of kingdomes still he shines
And graceth all his gracers. Then let lie
Your lutes, and viols, and more loftily
Make the heroiques of your Homer sung,
To drums and trumpets set his Angels tongue :
And with the princely sports of haukes you use.
Behold the kingly flight of his high Muse :
And see how like the Phoenix she renues
Her age, and starrie feathers in your sunne ;
Thousands of yeares attending ; everie one
Blowing the holy fire, and throwing in
Their seasons, kingdomes, nations that have bin
Subverted in them ; lawes, religions, all
Ofierd to change, and greedie funerall ;
Yet still your Homer lasting, living, raigning. —
and likewise the ist, the nth, and last but one, of the pre-
fatory sonnets to the Odyssey. Could I have foreseen any
other speedy opportunity, I should have begged your
acceptance of the volume in a somewhat handsomer coat ;
but as it is, it will better represent the sender, — to quote
from myself —
A man disherited, in form and face.
By nature and mishap, of outward grace.
Chapman in his moral heroic verse, as in this dedication
and the prefatory sonnets to his Odyssey, stands above
358 Notes on Chapman's Homer
Ben Jonson ; there is more dignity, more lustre, and equal
Dedication Strength ; but not midway quite between him and
toVrince°" the sonnets of Milton. I do not know whether I
Henry. gj^.^ ]-^jj^ ^^le higher praise, in that he reminds me
of Ben Jonson with a sense of his superior excellence, or
that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding his in-
feriority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like
Jonson's, nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up out
of his own natural habit and grandeur of thought, as in
Milton. The sentiments have been attracted to him by a
natural afl&nity of his intellect, and so combined ; — but
Jonson has taken them by individual and successive acts
of choice.
All this and the precedmg is well felt and vigorously,
though harshly, expressed, respecting sublime poetry in
genere ; but in reading Homer I look about me,
D?Scatorie ^ud ask how does all this apply here. For surely
Od ^^-^e • never was there plainer writing , there are a
^^^^^' thousand charms of sun and moonbeam, ripple,
and wave, and stormy billow, but all on the surface. Had
Chapman read Proclus and Porphjnry ? — and did he really
believe them, — or even that they believed themselves ?
They felt the immense power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran.
There was none in Greece or Rome, and they tried therefore
by subtle allegorical accommodations to conjure the poem
of Homer into the /SZ/SX/ov hoTapddorov of Greek faith.
Chapman's identification of his fate with Homer's, and
his complete forgetfulness of the distinction between Chris-
tianity and idolatry, under the general feeling of
DedStorie ^omc rcligiou, is very interesting. It is amusing
to the to observe, how familiar Chapman's fancy has be-
omachia°"'^" comc with Homcr, his life and its circumstances,
though the very existence of any such individupJ,
at least with regard to the Iliad and the Hymns, is more
than problematic. N.B. The rude engraving in the page
was designed by no vulgar hand. It is full of spirit and
passion.
I am so dull, that neither in the original nor in any
translation could I ever find any wit or wise purpose in
^ , r ^ this poem. The whole humour seems to lie in the
End of the t^i i- i • j. x
Batrachomy- uamcs. Thc frogs aud mice are not frogs or mice,
omachia. ^^^ mcu, and yet they do nothing that conveys
any satire. In the Greek there is much beauty of language,
Notes on Barclay's Argenis 359
but the joke is very flat. This is always the catse in rude
ages ; — their serious vein is inimitable, — their comic low
and low indeed. The psychological cause is easily stated,
and copiously exemplifiable.
NOTE IN CASAUBON'S PERSIUS.
1807.
There are six hundred and sixteen pages in this volume,
of which twenty-two are text ; and five hundred and
ninety-four commentary and introductory matter. Yet
when I recollect, that I have the whole works of Cicero,
Livy, and Ouinctilian, with many others, — the whole
works of each in a single volume, either thick quarto with
thin paper and small yet distinct print, or thick octavo or
duodecimo of the same character, and that they cost me
in the proportion of a shilling to a guinea for the same
quantity of worse matter in modern books, or editions, —
I am a poor man, yet one whom (SiS/Jojv xT'/iszc^g Ik
'TTuidccpiov diivog s^pdryjas -Trodog, feel the liveliest gratitude
for the age, which produced such editions, and for the
education, which by enabling me to understand and taste
the Greek and Latin writers, has thus put it in my power
to collect on my own shelves, for my actual use, almost all
the best books in spite of my small income. Somewhat
too I am indebted to the ostentation of expense among
the rich, which has occasioned these cheap editions to
become so disproportionately cheap.
NOTES ON BARCLAY'S ARGENIS.
1803.^
Heaven forbid that this work should not exist in its
present form and language ! Yet I cannot avoid the wish
that it had, during the reign of James I., been moulded
into an heroic poem in English octave stanza, or epic
blank verse ; — which, however, at that time had not been
invented, and which, alas ! still remains the sole property
of the inventor, as if the Muses had given him an unevad-
able patent for it. Of dramatic blank verse we have many
1 Communicaujd by the Rev. Dcrwent Coleridge.
360 Notes on Barclay's Argenis
and various specimens ; — for example, Shakspeare's as
compared with Massinger's, both excellent in their kind : —
of lyric, and of what may be called Orphic, or philosophic,
blank verse, perfect models may be found in Wordsworth :
of colloquial blank verse there are excellent, though not
perfect, examples in Cowper ; — but of epic blank verse,
since Milton, there is not one.
It absolutely distresses me when I reflect that this work,
admired as it has been by great men of all ages, and lately,
I hear, by the poet Cowper, should be only not unknown
to general readers. It has been translated into English
two or three times — how, I know not, wretchedly, I doubt
not. It affords matter for thought that the last transla-
tion (or rather, in all probability, miserable and faithless
abridgment of some former one) was given under another
name. What a mournful proof of the incelebrity of this
great and amazing work among both thepubhc and the
people ! For as Wordsworth, the greater of the two great
men of this age, — (at least, except Davy and him, I have
known, read of, heard of, no others) — for as Wordsworth
did me the honour of once observing to me, the people
and the public are two distinct claisses, and, as things go,
the former is Hkely to retain a better taste, the less it is
acted on by the latter. Yet Telemachus is in every
mouth, in every schoolboy's and schoolgirl's hand ! It
is awful to say of a work, like the Argenis, the style
and Latinity of which, judged (not according to classical
pedantry, which pronounces every sentence right which
can be found in any book prior to Boetius, however
vicious the age, or affected the author, and every
sentence wrong, however natural and beautiful, which
has been of the author's own combination, — but)
according to the universal logic of thought as modified
by feeling, is equal to that of Tacitus in energy and
genuine conciseness, and is as perspicuous as that of
Livy, whilst it is free from the affectations, obscurities,
and lust to surprise of the former, and seems a sort of
antithesis to the slowness and prolixity of the latter ; —
(this remark does not, however, impeach even the classi-
cality of the language, which, when the freedom and
originality, the easy motion and perfect command of the
thoughts, are considered, is truly wonderful) : — of such
a work it is awful to say, that it would have been well if
Bishop Corbet 361
it had been written in English or Italian verse ! Yet the
event seems to justify the notion. Alas ! it is now too
late. What modern work, even of the size of the Paradise
Lost — much less of the Faery Queene — would be read
in the present day, or even bought or be likely to be bought,
unless it were an instructive work, as the phrase is, like
Roscoe's quartos of Leo X., or entertaining like Boswell's
three of Dr. Johnson's conversations ? It may be fairly
objected — what work of surpassing merit has given the
proof ? — Certainly, none. Yet still there are ominous
facts, sufficient, I fear, to afford a certain prophecy of its
reception, if such were produced.
NOTES ON CHALMERS'S LIFE OF
SAMUEL DANIEL.
The justice of these remarks cannot be disputed, though some oi
them are too figurative for sober criticism.
Most genuine ! a figurative remark ! If this strange
writer had any meaning, it must be : — Headly's criticism
is just throughout, but conveyed in a style too figurative
for prose composition. Chalmers's own remarks are
wholly mistaken ; too silly for any criticism, drunk or
sober, and in language too flat for any thing. In Daniel's
Sonnets there is scarcely one good line ; while his Hymen's
Triumph, of which Chalmers says not one word, exhibits
a continued series of first-rate beauties in thought, passion,
and imagery, and in language and metre is so faultless,
that the style of that poem may without extravagance
be declared to be imperishable English. 1820.
BISHOP CORBET.
I ALMOST wonder that the inimitable humour, and the rich
sound and propulsive movement of the verse, have not
rendered Corbet a popular poet. I am convinced that a
reprint of his poems, with illustrative and chit-chat bio-
graphical notes, and cuts by Cruikshank, would take with
the pubhc uncommonly weU. September, 1823.
362 Notes on Selden's Table Talk
NOTES ON SELDEN'S TABLE TALK.i
There is more weighty bullion sense in this book, than
I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired
writer.
OPINION.
Opinion and affection extremely differ. I may affect a woman
best, but it does not follow I must think her the handsomest woman
in the world. * * * Opinion is something wherein I go about
to give reason why all the world should think as I think Affection
is a thing wherein I look after the pleasing of myself.
Good ! This is the true difference betwixt the beautiful
and the agreeable, which Knight and the rest of that
'TrXr^dog akov have SO beneficially confounded, meretricibus
scilicet et Pliitoni.
O what an insight the whole of this article gives into
a wise man's heart, who has been compelled to act with
the many, as one of the many ! It explains Sir Thomas
More's zealous Romanism, &c.
PARLIAMENT.
Excellent ! O ! to have been with Selden over his glass
of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle
of wisdom !
POETRY.
The old poets had no other reason but this, their verse was sung
to music ; otherwise it had been a senseless thing to have fettered
up themselves.
No man can know all things : even Selden here talks
ignorantly. Verse is in itself a music, and the natural
symbol of that union of passion with thought and pleasure,
which constitutes the essence of all poetry, as contra-
distinguished from science, and distinguished from history
civil or natural. To Pope's Essay on Man, — in short, to
whatever is mere metrical good sense and wit, the remark
applies.
lb.
Verse proves nothing but the quantity of syllables ; they axe
oot meant for logic.
1 These remarks on Selden were communicated by Mr. Ciry. Ed.
Notes on Tom Jones 363
True ; they, that is, verses, are not logic ; but they
are, or ought to be, the envoys and representatives of
that vital passion, which is the practical cement of logic ;
and without which logic must remain inert.
NOTES ON TOM JONES.*
Manners change from generation to generation, and with
manners morals appear to change, — actually change with
some, but appear to change with all but the abandoned.
A young man of the present day who should act as Tom
Jones is supposed to act at Upton, with Lady Bellaston,
&c. would not be a Tom Jones ; and a Tom Jones of the
present day, without perhaps being in the ground a better
man, would have perished rather than submit to be kept
by a harridan of fortune. Therefore this novel is, and,
indeed, pretends to be, no exemplar of conduct. But, not-
withstanding all this, I do loathe the cant which can
recommend Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe as strictly moral,
though they poison the imagination of the young with con-
tinued doses of tinct. lyttcB, while Tom Jones is prohibited as
loose. I do not speak of young women ; — but a young man
whose heart or feelings can be injured, or even his passions
excited, by aught in this novel, is already thoroughly
corrupt. There is a cheerful, sun-shiny, breezy spirit that
prevails everywhere, strongly contrasted with the close,
hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson. Every indis-
cretion, every immoral act, of Tom Jones, (and it must be
remembered that he is in every one taken by surprise — his
inward principles remaining firm — ) is so instantly punished
by embarrassment and unanticipated evil consequences of
his folly, that the reader's mind is not left for a moment to
dwell or run riot on the criminal indulgence itself. In
short, let the requisite allowance be made for the increased
refinement of our manners, — and then I dare believe that
no young man who consulted his heart and conscience only,
without adverting to what the world would say — could
rise from the perusal of Fielding's Tom Jones, Joseph
Andrews, or Amelia, without feeling himself a better man ;
— at least, without an intense conviction that he could not
be guilty of a base act.
1 Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.
364 Notes on Tom Jones
If I want a servant or mechanic, I wish to know what he
does : — but of a friend, I must know what he is. And in
no writer is this momentous distinction so finely brought
forward as by Fielding. We do not care what Blifil does ; —
the deed, as separate from the agent, may be good or ill ;
but Blifil is a villain ; — and we feel him to be so from the
very moment he, the boy Blifil, restores Sophia's poor
captive bird to its native and rightful liberty.
Book xiv. ch. 8.
Notwithstanding the sentiment of the Roman satirist, which
denies the divinity of fortune ; and the opinion of Seneca to the
same purpose ; Cicero, who was, I believe, a wiser man than either
of them, expressly holds the contrary ; and certain it is there are
some incidents in life so very strange and unaccountable, that it
seems to require more than human skill and foresight in producing
them.
Surely Juvenal, Seneca, and Cicero, all meant the same
thing, namely, that there was no chance, but instead of it
providence, either human or divine.
Book XV. ch. 9.
The rupture with Lady Bellaston,
Even in the most questionable part of Tom Jones, I
cannot but think, after frequent reflection, that an addi-
tional paragraph, more fully and forcibly unfolding Tom
Jones's sense of self-degradation on the discovery of the
true character of the relation in which he had stood to Lady
Bellaston, and his awakened feeling of the dignity of manly
chastity, would have removed in great measure any just
objections, — at all events relatively to Fielding himself,
and with regard to the state of manners in his time.
Book xvi. ch. 5.
That refined degree of Platonic affection which is absolutely
detached from the flesh, and is indeed entirely and purely spiritual,
is a gift confined to the female part of the creation ; many of whom
I have heard declare (and doubtless with great truth) that they
would, with the utmost readiness, resign a lover to a rival, when
such resignation was proved to be necessary for the temporal
interest of such lover.
I firmly believe that there are men capable of such a
sacrifice, and this, without pretending to, or even admiring
or seeing any virtue in, this absolute detachment from the
flesh.
Notes on Tom Jones 365
ANOTHER SET OF NOTES ON TOM JONES.
Book i. ch. 4.
** Beyond this the country gradually rose into a ridge of wild
mountains, the tops of which were above the clouds."
As this is laid in Somersetshire, the clouds must have
been unusually low. One would be more apt to think of
Skiddaw or Ben Nevis, than of Quantock or Mendip Hills.
Book xi. ch. I.
" Nor can the Devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor
possibly more welcome to him than a slanderer."
The very word Devil, Diabolus, means a slanderer.
Book xii. ch. 12.
" And here we will make a concession, which would not perhaps
have been expected from us ; That no limited form of government
is capable of rising to the same degree of perfection, or of pro-
ducing the same benefits to society with this. Mankind has never
been so happy, as when the greatest part of the then known world
was under the dominion of a single master ; and this state of their
felicity continued under the reign of five successive Princes."
Strange that such a lover of political hberty as Fielding
should have forgotten that the glaring infamy of the Roman
morals and manners immediately on the ascent of Corn-
modus prove, that even five excellent despots in suc-
cession were but a mere temporary palliative of the evils
inherent in despotism and its causes. Think you that all
the sub-despots were Trojans and Antonines ? No !
Rome was left as it was found by them, incapable of
freedom.
Book xviii. ch. 4.
Plato himself concludes his Phaedon with declaring, that his best
argument amounts only to raise a probability ; and Cicero himself
seems rather to profess an inclination to believe, than any actual
belief, in the doctrines of immortality.
No ! Plato does not say so, but speaks as a philosophic
Christian would do of the best arguments of the scientific
intellect. The assurance is derived from a higher principle.
If this be Methodism Plato and Socrates were arrant
366 Jonathan Wild
Methodists and New Light men ; but I would ask Fielding
what ratiocinations do more than raise a high degree of
probability. But assuredly an historic belief is far different
from Christian faith.
No greater proof can be conceived of the strength of the
instinctive anticipation of a future state than that it was
believed at all by the Greek Philosophers, with their vague
and (Plato excepted) Pantheistic conception of the First
Cause. S. T. C.
JONATHAN WILD.i
Jonathan Wild is assuredly the best of all the fictions in
which a villain is throughout the prominent character.
But how impossible it is by any force of genius to create a
sustained attractive interest for such a ground-work, and
how the mind wearies of, and shrinks from, the more than
painful interest, the //,/<r?jrof, of utter depravity, — Fielding
himself felt and endeavoured to mitigate and remedy by
the (on all other principles) far too large a proportion, and
too quick recurrence, of the interposed chapters of moral
reflection, like the chorus in the Greek tragedy, — admirable
specimens as these chapters are of profound irony and
philosophic satire. Chap. VI. Book 2, on Hats,^ — brief as
it is, exceeds any thing even in Swift's Lilliput, or Tale of
the Tub. How forcibly it applies to the WTiigs, Tories,
and Radicals of our own times.
Whether the transposition of Fielding's scorching wit
(as B. HI. c. xiv.) to the mouth of his hero be objectionable
on the ground of increduhcs odi, or is to be admired as
answering the author's purpose by unrealizing the story,
in order to give a deeper reality to the truths intended, — I
must leave doubtful, yet myself inclining to the latter
judgment. 27th Feb. 1832
1 Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.
2 ' In which our hero makes a speech well worthy to be celebrated ; and the behaviour
ctf one of the gang, perhaps more unnatural than any other part of this history.'
Notes on Junius 367
NOTES ON JUNIUS. 1807.
Stat nominis umbra.
As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the
poisoned dagger of an assassin.
Dedication to the English nation.
The whole of this dedication reads hke a string of aphor-
isms arranged in chapters, and classified by a resemblance
of subject, or a cento of points.
lb. If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal for the
public service has given me any weight in your esteem, let me
exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political
constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by,
without a determined persevering resistance.
A longer sentence and proportionately inelegant.
lb. If you reflect that in the changes of administration which
have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your
warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with the law-
ful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs
or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no
one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shorten-
ing the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister)
the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act passed,
has been constant and uniform on the part of government.
Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius cannot manage a
long sentence ; it has all the ins and outs of a snappish
figure-dance.
Preface.
An excellent preface, and the sentences not so snipt as in
the dedication. The paragraph near the conclusion begin-
ning with " some opinion may now be expected," &c. and
ending with " relation between guilt and punishment,"
deserves to be quoted as a master-piece of rhetorical ratio-
cination in a series of questions that permit no answer ; or
(as Junius says) carry their own answer along with them.
The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to
avoid with equal anxiety a common-place manner, and
matter that is not common-place. If ever he deviates into
any originality of thought, he takes care that it shall be
such as excites surprise for its acuteness, rather than admira-
368 Notes on Junius
tion for its profundity. He takes care ? say rather that
nature took care for him. It is impossible to detract from
the merit of these Letters : they are suited to their purpose,
and perfect in their kind. They impel to action, not
thought. Had they been profound or subtle in thought,
or majestic and sweeping in composition, they would have
been adapted for the closet of a Sydney, or for a House
of Lords such as it was in the time of Lord Bacon ; but
they are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the
right, and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and
epigrammatic, and fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange,
the lobby of the House of Commons, and to be read aloud
at a public meeting. When connected, dropping the forms
of connexion, desultory without abruptness or appearance
of disconnexion, epigrammatic and antithetical to excess,
sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong, yet
well-skilled to act the part of an honest warm-hearted man,
and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never
proving it, much less attempting to bottom it, — this is the
character of Junius ; — and on this character, and in the
mould of these writings must every man cast himself, who
would wish in factious times to be the important and long
remembered agent of a faction. I believe that I could do
all that Junius has done, and surpass him by doing many
things which he has not done : for example, — by an
occasional induction of starthng facts, in the manner of
Tom Paine, and lively illustrations and witty applications
of good stories and appropriate anecdotes in the manner of
Home Tooke. I believe I could do it if it were in my
nature to aim at this sort of excellence, or to be enamoured
of the fame, and immediate influence, which would be its
consequence and reward. But it is not in my nature. I
not only love truth, but I have a passion for the legitimate
investigation of truth. The love of truth conjoined with a
keen delight in a strict and skilful yet impassioned argu-
mentation, is my master-passion, and to it are subordinated
even the love of liberty and all my public feelings — and to
it whatever I labour under of vanity, ambition, and all my
inward impulses.
Letter L From this Letter all the faults and excel-
lencies of Junius may be exemplified. The moral and
pohtical aphorisms are just and sensible, the irony in which
his personal satire is conveyed is fine, yet always intellig-
Notes on Junius 369
ible ; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a sneer ;
the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms
of connection ; the he and it every where substituted for
the who and which ; the sentences are short, laboriously
balanced, and the antitheses stand the test of analysis much
better than Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their
kind ; — where is the defect ? In this ; — there is too much
of each, and there is a defect of many things, the presence
of which would have been not only valuable for their own
sakes, but for the relief and variety which they would have
given. It is observable too that every Letter adds to the
faults of these Letters, while it weakens the effect of their
beauties.
L. III. A capital letter, addressed to a private person,
and intended as a sharp reproof for intrusion. Its short
sentences, its witty perversions and deductions, its ques-
tions and omissions of connectives, all in their proper places
are dramatically good.
L. V. For my own part, I willingly leave it to the public to
determine whether your vindication of your friend has been as able
and judicious as it was certainly well intended ; and you, I think,
may be satisfied with the warm acknowledgments he already owes
you for making him the principal figure in a piece in which, but for
your amicable assistance, he might have passed without particular
notice or distinction.
A long sentence and, as usual, inelegant and cumbrous.
This Letter is a faultless composition with exception of the
one long sentence.
I,. VII. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed
imagination ; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the
inspiraiion.
The rhyme is a fault. 'Fancy' had been better ; though
but for the rhyme, imagination is the fitter word.
lb. Such a question might perhaps discompose the gravity of
his muscles, but I believe it would little atiect the tranquillity of his
conscience.
A false antithesis, a mere verbal balance ; there are far,
far too many of these. However, with these few exceptions,
this Letter is a blameless composition. Junius may be
safely studied as a model for letters where he truly writes
letters. Those to the Duke of Grafton and others, are
smaU pamphlets in the form of letters.
370 Notes on Junius
L. VIII. To do justice to your Grace's humanity, you felt for
Mac Quick as you ought to do ; and, if you had been contented to
assist him indirectly, without a notorious denial of justice, or openly
insulting the sense of the nation, you might have satisfied every
duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your
sovereign, or hazarding the reputation of his government.
An inelegant cluster of withouts. Junius asks questions
incomparably well ; — but ne quid nimis.
L. IX. Perhaps the fair way of considering these
Letters would be as a kind of satirical poems ; the short,
and for ever balanced, sentences constitute a true metre ;
and the connexion is that of satiric poetry, a witty logic, an
association of thoughts by amusing semblances of cause
and effect, the sophistry of which the reader has an interest
in not stopping to detect, for it flatters his love of mischief,
and makes the sport.
L. XII. One of Junius's arts, and which gives me a high
notion of his genius, as a poet and satirist, is this : — ^he
takes for granted the existence of a character that never did
and never can exist, and then employs his wit, and sur-
prises and amuses his readers with analyzing its incom-
patibilities.
L. XIV. Continual sneer, continual irony, aU excellent,
if it were not for the 'all' ; — but a countenance, with a
malignant smile in statuary fixure on it, becomes at length
an object of aversion, however beautiful the face, and how-
ever beautiful the smile. We are relieved, in some measure,
from this by frequent just and well expressed moral aphor-
isms ; but then the preceding and following irony gives
them the appearance of proceeding from the head, not from
the heart. This objection would be less felt, when the
Letters were first published at considerable intervals ; but
Junius wrote for posterity.
L. XXIII. Sneer and irony continued with such gross
violation of good sense, as to be perfectly nonsense. The
man who can address another on his most detestable vices
in a strain of cold continual irony, is himself a wretch.
L. XXXV. To honour them with a determined predilection
and confidence in exclusion of your English subjects, who placed
your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported
it upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting
generosity of youth.
The words 'upon the throne,' stand unfortunately for
Wonderfulness of Prose 371
the harmonious effect of the balance of 'placed* and
'supported. '
This address to the king is almost faultless in composi-
tion, and has been evidently tormented with the file. But
it has fewer beauties than any other long letter of Junius ;
and it is utterly undramatic. There is nothing in the style,
the transitions, or the sentiments, which represents the
passions of a man emboldening himself to address his
sovereign personally. Like a Presbyterian's prayer, you
may substitute almost every where the third for the second
I person without injury. The newspaper, his closet, and
his own person were alone present to the author's intention
and imagination. This makes the composition vapid. It
possesses an Isocratic correctness, when it should have had
the force and drama of an oration of Demosthenes. From
this, however, the paragraph beginning with the words 'As
to the Scotch,' and also the last two paragraphs must be
honourably excepted. They are, perhaps, the finest
passages in the whole collection.
WONDERFULNESS OF PROSE.
It has just struck my feelings that the Pherecydean origin
of prose being granted, prose must have struck men with
greater admiration than poetry. In the latter it was the
language of passion and emotion : it is what they them-
selves spoke and heard in moments of exultation, indigna-
tion, &c. But to hear an evolving roll, or a succession
of leaves, talk continually the language of deliberate
reason in a form of continued preconception, of a Z already
possessed when A was being uttered, — this must have
appeared godlike. I feel myself in the same state, when
in the perusal of a sober, yet elevated and harmonious
succession of sentences and periods, I abstract my mind
from the particular passage and sympathize with the
wonder of the common people, who say of an eloquent
man : — 'He talks like a book ! '
372 Notes on Herbert's Temple
NOTES ON HERBERT'S TEMPLE AND
HARVEY'S SYNAGOGUE.
G. Herbert is a true poet, but a poet sui generis, the
merits of whose poems will never be felt wdthout a sym-
pathy with the mind and character of the man. To
appreciate this volume, it is not enough that the reader
possesses a cultivated judgment, classical taste, or even
poetic sensibility, unless he be likewise a Christian, and
both a zealous and an orthodox, both a devout and a
devotional Christian. But even this will not quite suffice.
He must be an affectionate and dutiful child of the Church,
and from habit, conviction, and a constitutional pre-
disposition to ceremoniousness, in piety as in manners,
find her forms and ordinances aids of religion, not sources
of formality ; for religion is the element in which he lives,
and the region in which he moves.
The Church, say rather the Churchmen of England, under
the two first Stuarts, has been charged with a yearning
after the Romish fopperies, and even the papistic usurpa-
tions ; but we shall decide more correctly, as well as more
charitably, if for the Romish and papistic we substitute
the patristic leaven. There even was (natural enough
from their distinguished learning, and knowledge of ecclesi-
astical antiquities) an overrating of the Church and of the
Fathers, for the first five or even six centuries ; these lines
on the Egyptian monks, " Holy Macarius and great
Anthony " (p. 205) supply a striking instance and illustra-
tion of this.
P. 10.
If thou be single, all thy goods and ground
Submit to love ; but yet not more than all.
Give one estate as one life. None is bound
To work for two, who brought himself to thrall.
God made me one man ; love makes me no more.
Till labour come, and make my weakness score.
I do not understand this stanza.
p. 41.
My flesh began unto my soul in pain.
Sicknesses clave my bones, &c.
Either a misprint, or a noticeable idiom of the word
and Harvey's Synagogue 373
** began ? " Yes ! and a very beautiful idiom it is : the
first colloquy or address of the flesh.
P. 46.
What though my body run to dust ?
Faith cleaves unto it, counting every grain,
With an exact and most particular trust,
Reserving all for flesh again.
I find few historical facts so difficult of solution as the
continuance, in Protestantism, of this anti-scriptural
superstition.
P. 54. Second poem on The Holy Scriptures.
This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third that ten leaves off doth lie.
The spiritual unity of the Bible = the order and connec-
tion of organic forms in which the unity of life is shewn,
though as widely dispersed in the world of sight as the
text.
lb.
Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christian's destiny.
Som.e misprint.
P. 87.
Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie.
Nest.
P. 92. Man.
Each thing is full of duty :
Waters united are our navigation :
Distinguished, our habitation ;
Below, our drink ; above, our meat :
Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty ?
Then how are all things neat !
'Distinguished.' I understand this but imperfectly.
Did they form an island ? and the next lines refer perhaps
to the then belief that all fruits grow and are nourished
by water. But then how is the ascending sap " our clean-
liness ? " Perhaps, therefore, the rains.
P. 140.
But he doth bid us take his blood for wine.
Nay, the contrary ; take wine to be blood, and the
blood of a man who died 1800 years ago. This is the faith
374 Notes on Herbert's Temple
which even the Church of England demands ; ^ for con-
substantiation only adds a mystery to that of Transub-
stantiation, which it implies.
P. 175. The Flower.
A delicious poem.
lb.
How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clear
Are thy returns I e'en as the flowers in spring ;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away.
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.
"The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring."
u — uu — u —
Epitritus primus + Dactyl + Trochee + a long word
— syllable, which, together with the pause intervening
between it and the word — trochee, equals u u u - form a
pleasing variety in the Pentameter Iambic with rhjnnes.
Ex. gr.
The late past frosts | tributes of | pleasure | bring.
N.B. First, the difference between -u | — and an
amphimacer - u - | and this not always or necessarily
arising out of the latter being one word. It may even
consist of three words, yet the effect be the same. It is
the pause that makes the difference. Secondly, the expedi-
ency, if not necessity, that the iirst syllable both of the
Dactyl and the Trochee should be short by quantity, and
only = - by force of accent or position — the Epitrite being
true lengths. — Whether the last syllable be - or = - the
force of the rhymes renders indifferent. Thus, ....
1 This is one of my father's marginalia, which I can hardly persuade myself he would
have re-written just as it stands. Where does the Church of England affirm that the
w'mt. per se literally is the blood shed 1800 years ago? The language of our Church is
that " we receiving these creatures of bread and wine, &c. may be partakers of His most
blessed body and blood : " that " to such as rightly receive the same the cup of blessing
is a partaking of the blood of Christ." Does not this language intimate, that the blood
of Christ is spiritually produced in the soul through a faithful reception of the appointed
symbols, rather than that the wine itself, apart from the soul, has become the blood?
In one sense, indeed, it is the blood of Christ to the soul : it may be metaphorically
called so, if, by means of it, the blood is really, though spiritually, partaken. More
than this is surely not affirmed in our formularies, nor taught by our great divines in
general. I do not write these words by way of arg-unient, but because I cannot re-print
such a note of my father's, which has excited surprise in some of his studious readers,
without a protest. S. C
and Harvey's Synagogue 375
" As if there were no such cold thing." Had been no
ch thin^
P. 181.
such thing
Thou who condemnest Jewish hate, &c.
Call home thine eye, (that busy wanderer,)
That choice may be thy story.
Their choice.
P. 184.
Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine
E'en in my enemies' sight.
Foemen's.
P. 201. Judgment.
Almighty Judge, how shall poor wretches brook
Thy dreadful look, &c.
"What others mean to do, I know not well ;
Yet I here tell.
That some will turn thee to some leaves therein
So void of sin.
That they in merit shall excel.
I should not have expected from Herbert so open an
avowal of Romanism in the article of merit. In the same
spirit is *' Holy Macarius, and great Anthony," p. 205.^
P. 237. The Communion Table.
And for the matter whereof it is made.
The matter is not much.
Although it be of tuch,
Or wood, or metal, what will last, or fade ;
So vanity
And superstition avoided be.
i Herbert however adds :
'* But I resolve, when thou shalt call for mine,
That to decline,
And thrust a Testament into thy hand :
Let that be scann'd ;
There thou shalt find my faults are thine."
Martin Luther himself might have penned this concluding stanza.
Since I wrote the above, a note in Mr. Pickering's edition of Herbert has been pointed
out to me.
" The Rev. Dr. BHss has kindly furnished the following judicious remark, and which
is proved to be correct, as the word is printed * heare ' in the first edition {1630." He
says, " Let mc take this opportunity of mentioning what a very learned and able friend
pointed out on this note. The fact is, Coleridge has been misled by an error of the
press.
What others mean to do, I know not well,
Yet I here tell, &c. &c.
should be hear tell. The sense is then obvious, and Herbert is not made to do that
which he was the last man in the world to have done, namely, to avow ' Romanism in
the article of merit.'"
This suggestion once occurred to myself, and appears to be right, as it is verified by
the first edition : but at the time it seemed to me so obvious, that surely the correction
would have been made before if there had not been some rea.son against it. S. C.
376 Notes on Herbert's Temple
Tuch rhyming to much, from the German tuch, cloth, 1
never met with before, as an EngUsh word. So I find platt
for foliage in Stanley's Hist, of Philosophy, p. 22.
P. 252. The Synagogue, by Christopher Harvey.
The Bishop.
But who can show of old that ever any
Presbyteries without their bishops were :
Though bishops without presbyteries many, &c.
An instance of proving too much. If Bishop without
Presb. B. = Presb. i.e. no Bishop.
P. 253. The Bishop.
To rule and to be ruled are distinct.
And several duties, severally belong
To several persons.
Functions of times, but not persons, of necessity ? Ex.
Bishop to Archbishop.
P. 255. Church Festivals.
Who loves not you, doth but in vain profess
That he loves God, or heaven, or happiness.
Equally unthinking and uncharitable ; — I approve of
them ; — but yet remember Roman Catholic idolatry, and
that it originated in such high-flown metaphors as these.
P. 255. The Sabbath, or Lord's Day.
Hail Vail
Holy Wholly
King of days, &c. To thy praise, &c.
Make it sense and lose the rhyme ; or make it rhyme
and lose the sense.
P. 258. The Nativity, or Christmas Day.
Unfold thy face, unmask thy ray,
Shine forth, bright sun, double the day.
Let no malignant misty fume, tic.
The only poem in The Synagogue which possesses poetic
merit ; with a few changes and additions this would be a
striking poem.
Substitute the following for the fifth to the eighth line.
To sheath or blunt one happy ray,
That wins new splendour from the day.
This day that gives thee power to rise.
And shine on hearts as well as eyes :
Extract from a Letter 377
This birth-day of all souls, when first
On eyes of flesh and blood did burst
That primal great lucific light,
That rays to thee, to us gave sight.
P. 267. Whit-Sunday.
Nay, startle not to hear that rushing wind,
WTierewith this place is shaken, &c.
To hear at once so great variety
Of language from them come, &c.
The Spiritual miracle was the descent of the Holy Ghost :
the outward the wind and the tongues : and so St. Peter
himself explains it. That each individual obtained the
power of speaking all languages, is neither contained in,
nor fairly deducible from, St. Luke's account.
P. 269. Trinity Sunday.
The Trinity
In Unity,
And Unity
In Trinity,
All reason doth transcend.
Most true, but not contradict. Reason is to faith, as the
eye to the telescope.
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER
OF S. T. COLERIDGE TO W. COLLINS, R.A.
PRINTED IN THE LIFE OF COLLINS
BY HIS SON. VOL. I.
December, 1818.
To feel the full force of the Christian religion it is perhaps
necessary, for many tempers, that they should first be
made to feel, experimentally, the hollowness of human
friendship, the presumptuous emptiness of human hopes.
I find more substantial comfort now in pious George
Herbert's Temple, which I used to read to amuse myself
with his quaintness, in short, only to laugh at, than in
all the poetry since the poems of Milton. If you have
not read Herbert I can recommend the book to you con-
fidently. The poem entitled " The Flower " is especiaDy
378 Notes on Gray j
affecting, and to me such a phrase as " and relish versing "
expresses a sincerity and reaUty, which I would unwiUingly
exchange for the more dignified " and once more love the
Muse," &c. and so with many other of Herbert's homely
phrases.
NOTES ON MATHIAS' EDITION
OF GRAY.
O71 a distant prospect of Eton College.
Vol. i. p. 9.
Wanders the hoary Thames along
His silver-winding way. Gray
We want, methinks, a little treatise from some man of
flexible good sense, and weU versed in the Greek poets,
especially Homer, the choral, and other lyrics, containing
first a history of compound epithets, and then the laws
and licenses. I am not so much disposed as I used to be
to quarrel with such an epithet as " silver-winding ; " un-
grammatical as the hyphen is, it is not wholly illogical,
for the phrase conveys more than silvery and winding.
It gives, namely, the unity of the impression, the co-
inherence of the brightness, the motion, and the hne of
motion.
P. ID.
Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen
Full many a sprightly race
Disporting on thy margent green.
The paths of pleasure trace ;
Who foremost now delight to cleave.
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave ?
The captive linnet which enthral ?
What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle's speed,
Or urge the flying ball ? Gray.
This is the only stanza that appears to me very objection-
able in point of diction. This, I must confess, is not only
falsetto throughout, but is at once harsh and feeble, and
very far the worst ten lines in all the works of Mr. Gray,
English or Latin, prose or verse.
Notes on Gray 379
p. 12.
And envy wan, and faded care,^
Grim-visaged comfortless despair,^
And sorrow's piercing dart.-^
^ Bad in the first, ^ in the second, ^ in the last degree.
p. 15.
The proud are taught to taste of pain. Gray.
There is a want of dignity — a sort of irony in this phrase
to my feeling that would be more proper in dramatic than
in lyric composition.
On Gray's Platonica, vol. 1. p. 299. — 547.
Whatever might be expected from a scholar, a gentle-
man, a man of exquisite taste, as the quintessence of sane
and sound good sense, Mr. Gray appears to me to have per-
formed. The poet Plato, the orator Plato, Plato the ex-
quisite dramatist of conversation, the seer and the painter
of character, Plato the high-bred, highly-educated, aristo-
cratic republican, the man and the gentleman of quality
stands full before us from behind the curtain as Gray has
drawn it back. Even so does Socrates, the social wise
old man, the practical moralist. But Plato the philosopher,
but the divine Plato, was not to be comprehended within
the field of vision, or be commanded by the fixed immove-
able telescope of Mr. Locke's human understanding. The
whole sweep of the best philosophic reflections of French
or English fabric in the age of our scholarly bard, was not
commensurate with the mighty orb. The little, according
to my convictions at least, the very little of proper Platon-
ism contained in the written books of Plato, who himself,
in an epistle, the authenticity of which there is no tenable
ground for doubting, as I was rejoiced to find Mr. Gray
acknowledge, has declared all he had written to be sub-
stantially Socratic, and not a fair exponent of his own
tenets,^ even this little, Mr. Gray has either misconceived
or honestlyconfessed that,as he was not one of the initiated,
it was utterly beyond his comprehension. Finally, to
repeat the explanation with which I closed the last page
of these notes and extracts,
Volsimi e vidi Plato
(ma non quel Plato)
1 See Plato's second epistle (ppaffTeof 87) aot, di alPiy/xivv k. t. X. and towards
the end rk dt vvv \ey6fieya Sw/fparouj iffrl, k. t. X. See also the 7th Eptstle,
p. 341.
380 Notes on Gray
Che'n quella schiera ando piu presso a! segno,
Al qual' aggiunge, a chi dal Cielo e dato.^
S. T. Coleridge, 18 19.
P. 385. Hippias Major.
We learn from this dialogue in how poor a condition the art of
reasoning on moral and abstracted subjects was before the time of
Socrates : for it is impossible that Plato should introduce a sophist
of the first reputation for eloquence and knowledge in several
kinds, talking in a manner below the absurdity and weakness of a
child ; unless he had really drawn after the life. No less than
twenty-four pages are here spent in vain, only to force it into the
head of Hippias that there is such a thing as a general idea ; and
that, before we can dispute on any subject, we should give a defini-
tion of it.
Is not this, its improbability out of the question, contra-
dicted by the Protagoras of Plato's own drawing ? Are
there no authors, no physicians in London at the present
moment, of " the first reputation," i.e. whom a certain class
cry up : for in no other sense is the phrase historically
applicable to Hippias, whom a Sydenham redivivus or a
new Stahl might not exhibit as pompous ignoramuses ? no
one Hippias amongst them ? But we need not flee to con-
jectures. The ratiocination assigned by Aristotle and
Plato himself to Gorgias and then to the Eleatic School, are
positive proofs that Mr. Gray has mistaken the satire of an
individual for a characteristic of an age or class.
May I dare whisper to the reeds without proclaiming that
I am in the state of Midas, — may I dare to hint that Mr.
Gray himself had not, and through the spectacles of Mr.
Locke and his followers, could not have seen the difficulties
which Hippias found in a general idea, secundum Pla-
tonem ? S. T. C.
P. 386. Notes 289. Passages of Heraclitus.
' KvdpC)Triav 6 <ro0wroTOS irpbs Qeov iridTjKOS (paueTrai.
This latter passage is undoubtedly the original of that
famous thought in Pope's Essaj^ on xMan, B. 2 :
" And shewed a Newton as we shew an ape."
I remember to have met nearly the same words in one of
our elder Poets.
P. 390—91-
That a sophist wais a kind of merchant, or rather a retailer oi
^ Petrarch's 'J'rioti/o deUa l<ama, cap. terz. v. 4-6.
Notes on Gray 381
food for the soul, and, like other shopkeepers, would exert his
eloquence to recommend his own goods. The misfortune was, we
could not carry them off, like corporeal viands, set them by a
while, and consider them at leisure, whether they were wholesome
or not, before we tasted them : that in this case we have no vessel
but the soul to receive them in, which will necessarily retain a
tincture, and perhaps, much to its prejudice, of all which is instilled
into it.
Query, if Socrates, himself a scholar of the sophists, is
accurate, did not the change of 6 co^pig into 6 i.o(pi6r'!)g, in the
single case of Solon, refer to the wisdom-causing influences
of his legislation ? Mem : — to examine whether ^ptvTKS-rr.i
was, or was not, more generally used at first in malum
sensum, or rather the proper force originally of the termina-
tion /Vry;j, dffTTjg — whether (as it is evidently verbal) it
imply a reflex or a transitive act.
P. 399. 'Or/ 'A//tat)/a.
This is the true key and great moral of the dialogue, that know-
ledge alone is the source of virtue, and ignorance the source of vice ;
it was Plato's own principle, see Plat. Epist. 7. p. 336. 'A/xadia, i^^s
iravTa ko-ko, vracnv t^pi^wTat /cai ^Xaffrdvei /cat els varepov diroTeXel Kapirov
TOLS yevwiqaacTL TriKpdraToy. See also Sophist, p. 228 and 229, and
Euthydemus from p. 278 to 281, and De Legib. L. 3. p. 688.) and
probably it was also the principle of Socrates : the consequence of
it is, that virtue may be taught, and may be acquired : and that
philosophy alone can point us out the way to it.
More than our word. Ignorance, is contained in the' A,aa^/a
of Plato. I, however, freely acknowledge, that this was
the point of view, from which Socrates did for the most part
contemplate moral good and evil. Now and then he seems
to have taken a higher station, but soon quitted it for the
lower, more generally intelligible. Hence the vacillation
of Socrates himself : hence, too, the immediate opposition
of his disciples, Antisthenes and Aristippus. But that this
was Plato's own principle I exceedingly doubt. That it
was not the principle of Platonism, as taught by the first
Academy under Speusippus, I do not doubt at all. See the
xivth Essay, p. 129-39 of The Friend, vol. i. In the sense
in which d,aat)/a$ 'rrdvra xaxa epp/^urai^ x.t.X. is maintained
in that Essay, so and no otherwise can it be truly asserted,
and so and no otherwise did ug t/^ot yi dozsT, Plato teach it.
382 Barry Cornwall
BARRY CORNWALL.i
Barry Cornwall is a poet, me saltern judice : and in that
sense of the term, in which I apply it to C. Lamb and W.
Wordsworth. There are poems of i^reat merit, the authors
of which I should yet not leei impelled so to designate.
The faults of these poems are no less things of hope, than
the beauties ; both are just what they ought to be, — that
is, now.
If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn
him, that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledges,
so a poet cannot be a great poet, but as being likewise
inclusively an historian and naturalist, in the light, as well
as the life, of philosophy : all other men's worlds are his
chaos.
Hints obiter are : — not to permit delicacy and exquisite-
ness to seduce into effeminacy. Not to permit beauties by
repetition to become mannerisms. To be jealous of frag-
mentary composition, — as epicurism of genius, and apple-
pie made all of quinces. Item, that dramatic poetry must
be poetry hid in thought and passion, — not thought or
passion disguised in the dress of poetry. Lastly, to be
economic and withholding in similes, figures, &c. They
will all find their place, sooner or later, each as the luminary
of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry,
because it is language, — ergo processive, — ergo every the
smallest star must be seen singly.
There are not five metrists in the kingdom, whose works
are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed
to have spoken so plainly. But B. C. is a man of genius,
and it depends on himself — (competence protecting him
from gnawing or distracting cares) — to become a rightful
poet, — that is, a great man.
Oh ! for such a man worldly prudence is transfigured
into the highest spiritual duty ! How generous is self-
interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hope-
ful in all ages, as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare,
and Milton shall become the mother-tongue !
A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory, on
the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819.
1 Written in Mr. Lamb's copy of the ' Dramatic Scenes.' Ed.
On the Mode of Studying Kant 383
ON THE MODE OF STUDYING KANT.
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF MR. COLERIDGE TO
J. GOODEN, ESQ.l
Accept my thanks for the rules of the harmony. I per-
ceive that the members are chiefly merchants ; but yet it
were to be wished, that such an enlargement of the society
could be brought about as, retaining all its present purposes,
might add to them the groundwork of a library of northern
literature, and by bringing together the many gentlemen
who are attached to it be the means of eventually making
both countries better acquainted with the valuable part of
each other ; especially, the English with the German, for
our most sensible men look at the German Muses through
a film of prejudice and utter misconception.
With regard to philosophy, there are half a dozen things,
good and bad, that in this country are so nick-named, but
in the only accurate sense of the term, there neither are,
have been, or ever will be but two essentially different
schools of philosophy, the Platonic, and the Aristotelian.
To the latter but with a somewhat nearer approach to the
Platonic, Emanuel Kant belonged ; to the former Bacon
and Leibnitz, and, in his riper and better years, Berkeley.
And to this I profess myself an adherent — nihil novum, vel
inauditum audemus ; though, as every man has a face of
his own, without being more or less than a man, so is every
true philosopher an original, without ceasing to be an
inmate of Academus or of the Lyceum. But as to caution,
I will just tell you how I proceeded myself twenty years and
more ago, when I first felt a curiosity about Kant, and was
fully aware that to master his meaning, as a system, would
be a work of great labour and long time. First, I asked
myself, have I the labour and the time in my power ?
Secondly, if so, and if it would be of adequate importance
to me if true, by what means can I arrive at a rational pre-
sumption for or against ? I inquired after all the more
popular writings of Kant — read them with delight. I then
read the Prefaces of several of his systematic works, as the
Prolegomena, &c. Here too every part, I understood, and
1 This letter and the following notes on Jean Paul were communicated by Mr. H. C.
Robinson. S. C
384 On the Mode of Studying Kant
that was nearly the whole, was replete with sound and
plain, though bold and to me novel truths ; and I followed
Socrates' adage respecting Heraclitus : all I understand is
excellent, and I am bound to presume that the rest is at
least worth the trouble of trying whether it be not equally
so. In other words, until I understand a writer's ignor-
ance, I presume myself ignorant of his understanding.
Permit me to refer you to a chapter on this subject in my
Literary Life.^
Yet I by no means recommend to you an extension of
your philosophic researches beyond Kant. In him is con-
tained all that can be learned, and as to the results, you have
a firm faith in God, the responsible Will of Man and Im-
mortahty ; and Kant will demonstrate to you, that this
faith is acquiesced in, indeed, nay, confirmed by the Reason
and Understanding, but grounded on Postulates authorized
and substantiated solely by the Moral Being. There are
likewise mine : and whether the Ideas are regulative only,
as Aristotle and Kant teach, or constitutive and actual, as
Pythagoras and Plato, is of living interest to the philo-
sopher by profession alone. Both systems are equally
true, if only the former abstain from denying universally
what is denied indi\'idually. He, for whom Ideas are con-
stitutive, win in effect be a Platonist ; and in those for
whom they are regulative only, Platonism is but a hollow
affectation. Dryden could not have been a Platonist :
Shakspeare, Milton, Dante, Michael Angelo and Rafael
could not have been other than Platonists. Lord Bacon,
who never read Plato's works, taught pure Platonism in
his great work, the Novum Organum, and abuses his divine
predecessor for fantastic nonsense, which he had been the
first to explode. Accept my best respects, &c.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
14 Jan. 18 14. Highgate.
1 Biographia Literarfa. vol. i. chap xii. p. ?.t2. S. C
Notes on Jean Paul 385
NOTES ON THE PALINGENESIEN OF
JEAN PAUL.
Written in the blank leaf at the beginning.
S ist zu merken, dass die Sprache in diesem Buch nicht
sey wie in gewohnlich Bette, darin der Gedankenstrom
ordentlich and chrbar hinstromt, sondern wie cin Ver-
wiistung in Damm and Deichen.^
Preface, p. xxxi.
Two Revolutions, the Gallican, which sacrifices the individuals
to the Idea or to the State, and in time of need, even the latter
themselves ; — and the Kantian-Moralist (Kantisch-Moralische),
which abandons the affection of human Love altogether, because it
can so little be described as merit ; these draw and station us
forlorn human creatures ever further and more lonesomely one
from another, each on a frosty uninhabited island : nay the Gallican
which excites and arms feelings against feelings, does it less than
the Critical, which teaches us to disarm and to dispense with them
altogether ; and which neither allows Love to pass for the spring of
virtiie, nor virtue for the source of Love.^ Transl.
But surely Kant's aim was not to give a full Sittenlehre,
or system of practical material morality, but the a priori
form — Ethice formalis : which was then a most necessary
work, and the only mode of quelling at once both Necessi-
tarians and Meritmongers, and the idol common to both,
Eudcemonism. If his followers have stood still in lazy
adoration, instead of following up the road thus opened out
to them, it is their fault not Kant's.
S. T. C.
1 It is observable that the language in this book is not as in an ordinary channel,
wherein the stream of thought flows on in a seemly and regular manner, but like a
violent flood rushing against dyke and mole.
2 Zwei Revoluzionen, die gallische, welche der Idee oder dem Staate die Individtien,
and im Nothsal diesen selber opfert, und die kantisch-moralische, welche den Aflfekt
der Menschenliebe liegen lasset, weil er so wenig wie Verdienste geboten werden kan,
diese ziehen und stellen uus verlas-ene Menschen immer weiter und einsamer aus
cinander, jeden nur auf ein fro^tiges unbewohntes Eiland ; ja die gallische, die nur
Gefiihle gegen Gefiihle bewafnet und aufhezt, thut es weniger als die kritische, die sie
entwafnen und entbehren lehrt, und die weder die Liibe als Quelle der Tugend noch
diese als Quelle von jener gelten lassen kan.
L'ENVOY.
He was one who with long and large arm still collected
precious armfuls in whatever direction he pressed forward,
yet still took up so much more than he could keep together,
that those who followed him gleaned more from his
continual droppings than he himself brought home ; —
nay, made stately corn-ricks therewith, while the reaper
himself was still seen only with a strutting armful of
newly-cut sheaves. But I should misinform you grossly
if I left you to infer that his collections were a heap of
incoherent miscellanea. No ! the very contrary. Their
variet}^ conjoined with the too great coherency, the too
great both desire and power of referring them in systematic,
nay, genetic subordination, was that which rendered his
schemes gigantic and impracticable, as an author, and his
conversation less instructive as a man. Auditor em inopem
ipsa copia fecit. — Too much was given, all so weighty and
brilliant as to preclude a chance of its being all received, —
so that it not seldom passed over the hearer's mind like
a roar of many waters.
386
I
LECTURES
ON
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON.
THE FIRST LECTURE.
I CANNOT avoid the acknowledgment of the difficulty of
the task I have undertaken ; yet I have undertaken it
voluntarily, and I shall discharge it to the best of my
abilities, requesting those who hear me to allow for de-
ficiencies, -.md to bear in mind the wide extent of my
subject. The field is almost boundless as the sea, yet
full of beauty and variety as the land : I feel in some
sort oppressed by abundance ; inopem me copia fecit.
What I most rely upon is your sympathy ; and, as I
proceed, I trust that I shall interest you : sympathy and
interest are to a lecturer like the sun and the showers to
nature — absolutely necessary to the production of blossoms
and fruit.
May I venture to observe that my own life has been
employed more in reading and conversation — in collecting
and reflecting, than in printing and publishing ; for I never
felt the desire, so often experienced by others, of becoming
an author. It was accident made me an author in the
first instance : I was caUed a poet almost before I knew
I could write poetry. In what I have to offer I shall
speak freely, whether of myself or of my contemporaries,
when it is necessary : conscious superiority, if indeed it
be superior, need not fear to have its self-love or its pride
wounded ; and contempt, the most absurd and debasing
feeling that can actuate the human mind, must be far
below the sphere in which lofty intellects live and move
and have their being.
On the first examination of a work, especially a work
of fiction and fancy, it is right to inquire to what feeling
or passion it addresses itself — to the benevolent, or to
the vindictive ? whether it is calculated to excite emula-
tion, or to produce envy, under the common mask of
scorn ? and, in the next place, whether the pleasure we
receive from it has a tendency to keep us good, to make
us better, or to reward us for being good.
389
390 The First Lecture
It will be expected of me, as my prospectus indicates,
that I should say something of the causes of false criticism,
particularly as regards poetry, though I do not mean
to confine myself to that only : in doing so, it will be
necessary for me to point out some of the obstacles which
impede, and possibly prevent, the formation of a correct
judgment. These are either —
1. Accidental causes, arising out of the particular
circumstances of the age in which we live ; or —
2. Permanent causes, flowing out of the general prin-
ciples of our nature.
Under the first head, accidental causes, may be classed
— I. The events that have occurred in our ov/n day, which,
from their importance alone, have created a world of
readers. 2. The practice of public speaking, which
encourages a too great desire to be understood at once,
and at the first blush. 3. The prevalence of reviews,
magazines, newspapers, novels, &c.
Of the last, and of the perusal of them, I will run the
risk of asserting, that where the reading of novels prevails
as a habit, it occasions in time the entire destruction
of the powers of the mind : it is such an utter loss to the
reader, that it is not so much to be called pass-time as
kill-time. It conveys no trustworthy information as
to facts ; it produces no improvement of the intellect,
but fills the mind with a mawkish and morbid sensibility,
which is directly hostile to the cultivation, invigoration,
and enlargement of the nobler faculties of the under-
standing.
Reviews are generally pernicious, because the writers
determine without reference to fixed principles — because
reviews are usually filled with personalities ; and, above
all, because they teach people rather to judge than to
consider, to decide than to reflect : thus they encourage
superficiality, and induce the thoughtless and the idle to
adopt sentiments conveyed under the authoritative We,
and not, by the working and subsequent clearing of their
own minds, to form just original opinions. In older times
writers were looked up to almost as intermediate beings,
between angels and men ; afterwards they were regarded
as venerable and, perhaps, inspired teachers ; subsequently
they descended to the level of learned and instructive
friends ; but in modern days they are deemed culprits
The First Lecture 391
more than benefactors : as culprits they are brought
to the bar of self-erected and self-satisfied tribunals. If
a person be now seen reading a new book, the most usual
question is — " What trash have you there ? " I admit
that there is some reason for this difference in the estimate ;
for in these times, if a man fail as a tailor, or a shoe-
maker, and can read and write correctly (for spelling is
still of some consequence) he becomes an author.^
The crying sin of modern criticism is that it is over-
loaded with personality. If an author commit an error,
there is no wish to set him right for the sake of truth,
but for the sake of triumph — that the reviewer may show
how much wiser, or how much abler he is than the writer.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets,
historians, biographers, &c., if they could : they have
tried their talents at one or at the other, and have
failed ; therefore they turn critics, and, like the Roman
emperor, a critic most hates those who excel in the particu-
lar department in which he, the critic, has notoriously been
defeated. This is an age of personality and political
gossip, when insects, as in ancient Egypt, are worshipped
in proportion to the venom of their stings — when poems,
and especially satires, are valued according to the number
of living names they contain ; and where the notes, how-
ever, have this comparative excellence, that they are
generally more poetical and pointed than the text. This
style of criticism is at the present moment one of the
chief pillars of the Scotch professorial court ; and, as to
personality in poems, I remember to have once seen an
epic advertised, and strongly recommended, because it con-
tained more than a hundred names of living characters.
How derogatory, how degrading, this is to true poetry
I need not say. A very wise writer has maintained that
there is more difference between one man and another,
than between man and a beast : I can conceive of no
lower state of human existence than that of a being who,
insensible to the beauties of poetry himself, endeavours to
reduce others to his own level. What Hooker so eloquently
claims for law I say of poetry — " Her seat is the bosom
of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things
1 Here my shorthand note informs me that Coleridge made a quotation from Jeremy
Taylor, but from what work, or of what import, does not appear. He observed, that
"although Jeremy Taylor wrote only in prose, according to some definitions of poetry
he might be considered one of our noblest poets." — J. P. C.
392 The First Lecture
in heaven and on earth do her homage." It is the language
of heaven, and in the exquisite dehght we derive from
poetry we have, as it were, a type, a foretaste, and a
prophecy of the joys of heaven.
Another cause of false criticism is the greater purity
of morality in the present age, compared even with the
last. Our notions upon this subject are sometimes carried
to excess, particularly among those who in print affect to
enforce the value of a high standard. Far be it from me
to depreciate that value ; but let me ask, who now will
venture to read a number of the Spectator, or of the
Tatler, to his wife and daughters, without first examining
it to make sure that it contains no word which might, in
our day, offend the delicacy of female ears, and shock
feminine susceptibility ? Even our theatres, the repre-
sentations at which usually reflect the morals of the
period, have taken a sort of domestic turn, and while the
performances at them may be said, in some sense, to
improve the heart, there is no doubt that they vitiate the
taste. The effect is bad, however good the cause.
Attempts have been made to compose and adapt systems
of education ; but it appears to me something like putting
Greek and Latin grammars into the hands of boys, before
they understand a word of Greek or Latin. These grammars
contain instructions on all the minutiae and refinements of
language, but of what use are they to persons who do not
comprehend the first rudiments ? Why are you to furnish
the means of judging, before you give the capacity to judge?
These seem to me to be among the principal accidental
causes of false criticism.
Among the permanent causes, I may notice —
First, the great pleasure we feel in being told of the know-
ledge we possess, rather than of the ignorance we suffer.
Let it be our first duty to teach thinking, and then what to
think about. You cannot expect a person to be able to go
through the arduous process of thinking, who has never
exercised his faculties. In the Alps we see the chamois
hunter ascend the most perilous precipices without danger,
and leap from crag to crag over vast chasms without dread
or difficulty, and who but a fool, if unpractised, would
attempt to follow him ? it is not intrepidity alone that is
necessary, but he who would imitate the hunter must have
gone through the same process for the acquisition of
The First Lecture 393
strength, skill, and knowledge : he must exert, and be
capable of exerting, the same muscular energies, and dis-
play the same perseverance and courage, or all his efforts
will be worse than fruitless : they will lead not only to
disappointment, but to destruction. Systems have been
invented with the avowed object of teaching people how to
think ; but in my opinion the proper title for such a work
ought to be " The Art of teaching how to think without
thinking." Nobody endeavours to instruct a man how to
leap, until he has first given him vigour and elasticity.
Nothing is more essential — nothing can be more im-
portant, than in every possible way to cultivate and im-
prove the thinking powers : the mind as much requires
exercise as the body, and no man can fully and adequately
discharge the duties of whatever station he is placed in
without the power of thought. I do not, of course, say
that a man may not get through life without much thinking,
or much power of thought ; but if he be a carpenter, with-
out thought a carpenter he must remain : if he be a weaver,
without thought a weaver he must remain. — On man God
has not only bestowed gifts, but the power of giving : he
is not a creature born but to live and die : he has had
faculties communicated to him, which, if he do his duty, he
is bound to communicate and make beneficial to others.
Man, in a secondary sense, may be looked upon in part as
his own creator, for by the improvement of the faculties
bestowed upon him by God, he not only enlarges them, but
may be said to bring new ones into existence. The
Almighty has thus condescended to communicate to man,
in a high state of moral cultivation, a portion of his own
great attributes.
A second permanent cause of false criticism is connected
with the habit of not taking the trouble to think : it is the
custom which some people have established of judging of
books by books. — Hence to such the use and value of
reviews. Why has nature given limbs, if they are not to be
applied to motion and action ; why abilities, if they are to
lie asleep, while we avail ourselves of the eyes, ears, and
understandings of others ? As men often employ servants,
to spare them the nuisance of rising from their seats and
walking across a room, so men employ reviews in order to
save themselves the trouble of exercising their own powers
of judging : it is only mental slothfulness and sluggishness
394 The First Lecture
that induce so many to adopt, and take for granted the
opinions of others.
I may illustrate this moral imbecility by a case which
came within my own knowledge. A friend of mine had
seen it stated somewhere, or had heard it said, that Shak-
speare had not made Constance, in " King John," speak
the language of nature, when she exclaims on the loss of
Arthur,
" Grief fills the room up of my absent child.
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me ;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form :
Then have I reason to be fond of grief."
King John, Act iii.. Scene 4.
Within three months after he had repeated the opinion
(not thinking for himself) that these lines were out of
nature, my friend died. I called upon his mother, an
affectionate, but ignorant woman, who had scarcely heard
the name of Shakspeare, much less read any of his plays.
Like Philip, I endeavoured to console her, and among other
things I told her, in the anguish of her sorrow, that she
seemed to be as fond of grief as she had been of her son.
What was her reply ? Almost a prose parody on the
very language of Shakspeare — the same thoughts in nearly
the same words, but with a different arrangement. An
attestation like this is worth a thousand criticisms.
As a third permanent cause of false criticism we may
notice the vague use of terms. And here I may take the
liberty of impressing upon my hearers, the fitness, if not
the necessity, of employing the most appropriate words
and expressions, even in common conversation, and in the
ordinary tra.nsactions of life. If you want a substantive
do not take the first that comes into your head, but that
which most distinctly and peculiarly conveys your mean-
ing : if an adjective, remember the grammatical use of
that part of speech, and be careful that it expresses some
quality in the substantive that you wish to impress upon
your hearer. Reflect for a moment on the vague and
uncertain manner in which the word " taste " has been
often employed ; and how such epithets as " sublime,"
" majestic," " grand," " striking," " picturesque," &c.,
The First Lecture 395
have been misapplied, and how they have been used on the
most unworthy and inappropriate occasions.
I was one day admiring one of the falls of the Clyde ;
and ruminating upon what descriptive term could be most
fitly applied to it, I came to the conclusion that the epithet
" majestic " was the most appropriate. While I was still
contemplating the scene a gentleman and a lady came up,
neither of whose faces bore much of the stamp of superior
intelligence, and the first words the gentleman uttered
were ** It is very majestic." I was pleased to find such a
confirmation of my opinion, and I complimented the
spectator upon the choice of his epithet, saying that he had
used the best word that could have been selected from our
language : " Yes, sir," replied the gentleman, " I say it is
very majestic : it is sublime, it is beautiful, it is grand, it is
picturesque." — " Ay " (added the lady), "it is the prettiest
thing I ever saw." I own that I was not a little dis-
concerted.
You will see, by the terms of my prospectus, that I
intend my lectures to be, not only " in illustration of the
principles of poetry," but to include a statement of the
application of those principles, " as grounds of criticism
on the most popular works of later English poets, those
of the living included." If I had thought this task pre-
sumptuous on my part, I should not have voluntarily
undertaken it ; and in examining the merits, whether
positive or comparative, of my contemporaries, I shall
dismiss aU feelings and associations which might lead me
from the formation of a right estimate. I shall give talent
and genius its due praise, and only bestow censure where,
as it seems to me, truth and justice demand it. I shall,
of course, carefuUy avoid falling into that system of false
criticism, which I condemn in others ; and, above all,
whether I speak of those whom I know, or of those whom
I do not know, of friends or of enemies, of the dead or of the
living, my great aim will be to be strictly impartial. No
man can truly apply principles, who displays the slightest
bias in the application of them ; and I shall have much
greater pleasure in pointing out the good, than in exposing
the bad. I fear no accusation of arrogance from the
amiable and the wise : I shall pity the weak, and despise
the malevolent.
END OF THE FIRST LECTURE.
396
The Second Lecture
THE SECOND LECTURE.
Readers may be divided into four classes :
1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it
nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied.
2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to
get through a book for the sake of getting through the
time.
3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what
they read.
4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who
profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by
it also.i
I adverted in my last lecture to the prevailing laxity in
the use of terms : this is the principal complaint to which
the moderns are exposed ; but it is a grievous one, inas-
much as it inevitably tends to the misapplication of words,
and to the corruption of language. I mentioned the word
" taste," but the remark applies not merely to substantives
and adjectives, to things and their epithets, but to verbs :
thus, how frequently is the verb " indorsed " strained
from its true signification, as given by Milton in the ex-
pression— " And elephants indorsed with towers." Again
" virtue " has been equally perverted : originally it
signified merely strength ; it then became strength of
mind and valour, and it has now been changed to the
class term for moral excellence ^ in all its various species.
I only introduce these as instances by the way, and nothing
could be easier than to multiply them.
1 In " Notes and Queries," July 22. 1854, I quoted this four-fold division of readers ;
and in a friendly letter to me, the Rev. S. R. Maitland pointed out the following
passage in the Mishna {Cap. Patrum, v. § 15), which Coleridge clearly had in his
mind, but to which my shorthand note does not state that he referred. It is very
possible that I did not catch the reference ; but more probable that he omitted it,
thinking it not necessary, in an extetnporaneous lecture, to quote chapter and verse for
whatever he delivered. Had Coleridge previously written, or subsequently printed,
his Lectures, he would, most likel}', not have omitted the information : —
" Quadruplices conditiones (inveniunt) in his qui sedent coram sapientibus (audiendi
causa) videlicet conditio spongiae, clepsydrae, sacci lecinacei, et cribri. Spongia
sugendo attrahit omnia. Clepsydra, quod ex una parte attrahit, ex altera rursum
effundit. Saccus fecinaceus effundit vinum, el colligi: feces. Cribrum emittit
farinam, et colligit similam." — J. P. C.
2 My shorthand note of this part of the sentence strongly illustrates the point
adverted to in the Preface, viz. , how easy it is for a person, somewhat mechanically
taking down words uttered vivd voce, to mishear what is said. I am confident that
Coleridge's words were 'moral excellence" — there cannot be a doubt about it — but
in my note it stands ^^ vtodern excellence." My ear deceived me, and I thought he
said tnodcrn, when in tact he said "moral." — J. P. C.
The Second Lecture 397
At the same time, while I recommend precision both
of thought and expression, I am far from advocating a
pedantic niceness in the choice of language : such a course
would only render conversation stiff and stilted. Dr.
Johnson used to say that in the most unrestrained dis-
course he always sought for the properest word, — that
which best and most exactly conveyed his meaning : to a
certain point he was right, but because he carried it too
far, he was often laborious where he ought to have been
light, and formal where he ought to have been familiar.
Men ought to endeavour to distinguish subtilely, that they
may be able afterwards to assimilate truly.
I have often heard the question put whether Pope
is a great poet, and it has been warmly debated on both
sides, some positively maintaining the affirmative, and
others dogmatically insisting upon the negative ; but it
never occurred to either party to make the necessary
preliminary inquiry — What is meant by the words " poet "
and " poetry ? " Poetry is not merely invention : if
it were, Gulliver's Travels would be poetry ; and before
you can arrive at a decision of the question, as to Pope's
claim, it is absolutely necessary to ascertain what people
intend by the words they use. Harmonious versification
no more makes poetry than mere invention makes a poet ;
and to both these requisites there is much besides to be
added. In morals, politics, and philosophy no useful
discussion can be entered upon, unless we begin by ex-
plaining and understanding the terms we employ. It is
therefore requisite that I should state to you what I mean
by the word " poetry," before I commence any considera-
tion of the comparative merits of those who are popularly
called " poets."
Words are used in two ways : —
1. In a sense that comprises everything called by that
name. For instance, the words " poetry " and " sense "
are employed in this manner, when we say that such a
line is bad poetry or bad sense, when in truth it is neither
poetry nor sense. If it be bad poetry, it is not poetry ; if
it be bad sense, it is not sense. The same of " metre " :
bad metre is not metre.
2. In a philosophic sense, which must include a defini-
tion of what is essential to the thing. Nobody means
mere metre by poetry ; so, mere rhyme is not poetry.
398 The Second Lecture
Something more is required, and what is that something ?
It is not wit, because we may have wit where we never
dream of poetry. Is it the just observation of human
hfe ? Is it a pecuUar and a feUcitous selection of words ?
This, indeed, would come nearer to the taste of the present
age, when sound is preferred to sense ; but I am happy
to think that this taste is not likely to last long.
The Greeks and Romans, in the best period of their
literature, knew nothing of any such taste. High-flown
epithets and violent metaphors, conveyed in inflated
language, is not poetry. Simplicity is indispensable, and
in Catullus it is often impossible that more simple language
could be used ; there is scarcely a word or a line, which a
lamenting mother in a cottage might not have employed.^
That I may be clearly understood, I will venture to give
the following definition of poetry.
It is an art (or whatever better term our language may
afford) of representing, in words, external nature and
human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human
affections, by the production of as much immediate
pleasure in parts, as is compatible with the largest sum
of pleasure in the whole.
Or, to vary the words, in order to make the abstract
idea more intelligible : —
It is the art of communicating whatever we wish to
communicate, so as both to express and produce excite-
ment, but for the purpose of immediate pleasure ; and
each part is fitted to afford as much pleasure, as is com-
patible with the largest sum in the whole.
You will naturally ask my reasons for this definition of
poetry, and they are these : —
"It is a representation of nature ; " but that is not
enough : the anatomist and the topographer give repre-
sentations of nature ; therefore I add :
" And of the human thoughts and affections." Here
the metaphysician interferes : here our best novelists
interfere Ukewise, — excepting that the latter describe
with more minuteness, accuracy, and truth, than is con-
sistent with poetry. Consequently I subjoin :
" It must be relative to the human affections." Here
1 It appears by my shorthand note that Coleridge here named some particular poem
by Catullus ; but what it was is not stated, a blank having been left for the title. It
would not be difficult to fill the chasm speculatively ; but I prefer to give my memo-
randum as it stands.— J. P. C.
The Second Lecture 399
my chief point of difference is with the novel-writer, the
historian, and all those who describe not only nature, and
the human affections, but relatively to the human affec-
tions : therefore I must add :
" And it must be done for the purpose of immediate
pleasure." In poetry the general good is to be accom-
plished through the pleasure, and if the poet do not do
that, he ceases to be a poet to him to whom he gives it
not. Still, it is not enough, because we may point out
many prose writers to whom the whole of the definition
hitherto furnished would apply. I add, therefore, that it
is not only for the purpose of immediate pleasure, but —
" The work must be so constructed as to produce in
each part that highest quantity of pleasure, or a high
quantity of pleasure." There metre introduces its claim,
where the feeling calls for it. Our language gives to
expression a certain measure, and will, in a strong state
of passion, admit of scansion from the very mouth. The
very assumption that we are reading the work of a poet
supposes that he is in a continuous state of excitement ;
and thereby arises a language in prose unnatural, but in
poetry natural.
There is one error which ought to be peculiarly guarded
against, which young poets are apt to fall into, and which
old poets commit, from being no poets, but desirous of the
end which true poets seek to attain. No : I revoke the
words ; they are not desirous of that of which their little
minds can have no just conception. They have no desire
of fame — that glorious immortality of true greatness —
" That lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all judging Jove ; "
Milton's Lycidas.
but they struggle for reputation, that echo of an echo, in
whose very etymon its signification is contained. Into
this error the author of " The Botanic Garden " has fallen,
through the whole of which work, I will venture to assert,
there are not twenty images described as a man vv^ould
describe them in a state of excitement. The poem is
written with aU the tawdry industry of a milliner anxious
to dress up a doll in silks and satins. Dr. Darwin laboured
to make his style fine and gaudy, by accumulating and
applying all the sonorous and handsome-looking words
400 The Second Lecture
in our language. This is not poetry, and I subjoin to my
definition —
That a true poem must give " as much pleasure in each
part as is compatible with the greatest sum of pleasure in
the whole." We must not look to parts merely, but to the
whole, and to the effect of that whole. In reading Milton,
for instance, scarcely a line can be pointed out which,
critically examined, could be called in itself good : the
poet would not have attempted to produce merely what
is in general understood by a good line ; he sought to pro-
duce glorious paragraphs and systems of harmony, or, as
he himself expresses it,
" Many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out."
L'A llegro.
Such, therefore, as I have now defined it, I shall consider
the sense of the word " Poetry " : pleasurable excitement
is its origin and object ; pleasure is the magic circle out
of which the poet must not dare to tread. Part of my
definition, you will be aware, would apply equally to the
arts of painting and music, as to poetry ; but to the last
are added words and metre, so that my definition is strictly
and logically applicable to poetry, and to poetry only,
which produces delight, the parent of so many virtues.
When I was in Italy, a friend of mine, who pursued painting
almost with the enthusiasm of madness, believing it
superior to every other art, heard the definition I have
given, acknowledged its correctness, and admitted the
pre-eminence of poetry.
I never shall forget, when in Rome, the acute sensation
of pain I experienced on beholding the frescoes of Raphael
and Michael Angelo, and on reflecting that they were in-
debted for their preservation solely to the durable material
upon which they were painted. There they are, the per-
manent monuments (permanent as long as waUs and
plaster last) of genius and skill, while many others of their
mighty works have become the spoils of insatiate avarice,
or the victims of wanton barbarism. How grateful ought
mankind to be, that so many of the great hterary produc-
tions of antiquity have come down to us — that the works
of Homer, Euclid, and Plato, have been preserved — while
we possess those of Bacon, Newton, Milton, Shakspeare,
The Second Lecture 401
and of so many other living-dead men of our own island.
These, fortunately, may be considered indestructible :
they shall remain to us till the end of time itself — till time,
in the words of a great poet of the age of Shakspeare, has
thrown his last dart at death, and shall himself submit to
the final and inevitable destruction of all created matter.^
A second irruption of the Goths and Vandals could not
now endanger their existence, secured as they are by the
wonders of modern invention, and by the affectionate
admiration of myriads of human beings. It is as nearly
two centuries as possible since Shakspeare ceased to write,
but when shall he cease to be read ? When shall he cease
to give light and delight ? Yet even at this moment he is
only receiving the first-fruits of that glory, which must
continue to augment as long as our language is spoken.
English has given immortality to him, and he has given
immortality to English. Shakspeare can never die, and
the language in which he wrote must with him live for ever.
Yet, in spite of all this, some prejudices have attached
themselves to the name of our illustrious countryman,
which it will be necessary for me first to endeavour to over-
come. On the continent, we may remark, the works of
Shakspeare are honoured in a double way — by the admira-
tion of the Germans, and by the contempt of the French.
Among other points of objection taken by the French,
perhaps, the most noticeable is, that he has not observed
the sacred unities, so hallowed by the practice of their own
extolled tragedians. They hold, of course after Corneille
and Racine, that Sophocles is the most perfect model for
tragedy, and Aristotle its most infallible censor ; and that
as Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and other dramas by Shakspeare
are not framed upon that model, and consequently not
subject to the same laws, they maintain (not having im-
partiality enough to question the model, or to deny the
rules of the Stagirite) that Shakspeare was a sort of
irregular genius — that he is now and then tasteful and
touching, but generally incorrect ; and, in short, that he
1 Alluding, of course, to Ben Jonson's epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke :
'* Underneath this sable herse
Lies the subject of all verse,
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death 1 ere thou hast slain another,
Learn 'd, and fair, and good as she.
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Ben /onsen's IVorks ; edit. Gifford, viii. 337.— J. P. C
402 The Second Lecture
was a mere child of nature, who did not know any better
than to write as he has written.
It is an old, and I have hitherto esteemed it a just, Latin
maxim, Oportet discentem credere, edoctum judicare ; but
modern practice has inverted it, and it ought now rather
to stand, Oportet discentem judicare, edoctum credere. To
remedy this mistake there is but one course, namely the
acquirement of knowledge. I have often run the risk of
applying to the ignorant, who assumed the post and pro-
vince of judges, a ludicrous, but not inapt simile : they
remind me of a congregation of frogs, involved in darkness
in a ditch, who keep an eternal croaking, until a lantern is
brought near the scene of their disputation, when they
instantly cease their discordant harangues. They may be
more politely resembled to night-flies, which flutter round
the glimmering of a feeble taper, but are overpowered by
the dazzling splendour of noon-day. Nor can it be other-
wise, until the prevalent notion is exploded, that know-
ledge is easily taught, and until the conviction is general,
that the hardest thing learned is that people are ignorant.
All are apt enough to discover and expose the ignorance of
their friends, but their blind faith in their own sufficiency
is something more than marvellous.
Some persons have contended that mathematics ought
to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the
senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious : it ought
to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not
feel ; and it is very much owing to this mistake that, to
those who do not think, and have not been made to think,
Shakspeare has been found so difficult of comprehension.
The condition of the stage, and the character of the times
in which our great poet flourished, must first of all be taken
into account, in considering the question as to his judgment.
If it were possible to say which of his great powers and
qualifications is more admirable than the rest, it unques-
tionably appears to me that his judgment is the most
Vv'onderful ; and at this conviction I have arrived after a
careful comparison of his productions with those of his best
and greatest contemporaries.
If indeed " King Lear " were to be tried by the laws
which Aristotle established, and Sophocles obeyed, it must
be at once admitted to be outrageously irregular ; and
supposing the rules regarding the unities to be founded on
The Second Lecture 403
man and nature, Shakspeare must be condemned for array-
ing his works in charms with which they ought never to
have been decorated. I have no doubt, however, that both
were right in their divergent courses, and that they arrived
at the same conclusion by a different process.
Without entering into matters which must be generally
known to persons of education, respecting the origin of
tragedy and comedy among the Greeks, it may be observed,
that the unities grew mainly out of the size and construc-
tion of the ancient theatres : the plays represented were
made to include within a short space of time events which
it is impossible should have occurred in that short space.
This fact alone establishes, that all dramatic performances
were then looked upon merely as ideal. It is the same
with us : nobody supposes that a tragedian suffers real
pain when he is stabbed or tortured ; or that a comedian is
in fact transported with delight when successful in pre-
tended love.
If we want to witness mere pain, we can visit the
hospitals : if we seek the exhibition of mere pleasure, we
can find it in ball-rooms. It is the representation of it,
not the reality, that we require, the imitation, and not the
thing itself ; and we pronounce it good or bad in pro-
portion as the representation is an incorrect, or a correct
imitation. The true pleasure we derive from theatrical
performances arises from the fact that they are unreal and
fictitious. If djring agonies were unfeigned, who, in these
days of civilisation, could derive gratification from behold-
ing them ?
Performances in a large theatre made it necessary that
the human voice should be unnaturally and unmusically
stretched ; and hence the introduction of recitative, for
the purpose of rendering pleasantly artificial the distortion
of the face, and straining of the voice, occasioned by the
magnitude of the building. The fact that the ancient
choruses were always on the stage made it impossible
that any change of place should be represented, or even
supposed.
The origin of the English stage is less boastful than that
of the Greek stage : like the constitution under which we
live, though more barbarous in its derivation, it gives more
genuine and more diffused liberty, than Athens in the
zenith of her political glory ever possessed. Our earUest
404 The Second Lecture
dramatic performances were religious, founded chiefly
upon Scripture history ; and, although countenanced by
the clergy, they were filled with blasphemies and ribaldry,
such as the most hardened and desperate of the present
day would not dare to utter. In these representations
vice and the principle of evil were personified ; and hence
the introduction of fools and clowns in dramas of a m^ore
advanced period.
While Shakspeare accommodated himself to the taste
and spirit of the times in which he lived, his genius and his
judgment taught him to use these characters with terrible
effect, in aggravating the misery and agony of some of his
most distressing scenes. This result is especially obvious
in " King Lear " : the contrast of the Fool wonderfully
heightens the colouring of some of the most painful situa-
tions, where the old monarch in the depth and fury of his
despair, complains to the warring elements of the ingrati-
tude of his daughters.
Spit, fire ! spout, rain !
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters :
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness,
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children ;
You owe me no subscription : then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure ; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man."
King Lear, Act iii.. Scene 2.
Just aftenvards, the Fool interposes, to heighten and
inflame the passion of the scene.
In other dramas, though perhaps in a less degree, our
great poet has evinced the same skill and felicity of treat-
ment ; and in no instance can it be justly alleged of him,
as it may be of some of the ablest of his contemporaries,
that he introduced his fool, or his clown, merely for the
sake of exciting the laughter of his audiences. Shakspeare
had a loftier and a better purpose, and in this respect
availed himself of resources, which, it would almost seem,
he alone possessed.^
1 I most deeply regret, that I have not recovered any of my notes of the third, fourth^
and fifth Lectures.— J. P. C.
END OF THE SECOND LECTURE.
The Sixth Lecture 405
THE SIXTH LECTURE.
The recollection of what has been said by some of his
biographers, on the supposed fact that Milton received
corporal punishment at college, induces me to express my
entire dissent from the notion, that flogging or caning has
a tendency to degrade and debase the minds of boys at
school. In my opinion it is an entire mistake ; since this
species of castigation has not only been inflicted time out
of mind, but those who are subjected to it are well aware
that the very highest persons in the realm, and those to
whom people are accustomed to look up with most respect
and reverence, such as the judges of the land, have quietly
submitted to it in their pupilage.
I well remember, about twenty years ago, an advertise-
ment from a schoolmaster, in which he assured tender-
hearted and foolish parents, that corporal punishment was
never inflicted, excepting in cases of absolute necessity ;
and that even then the rod was composed of lilies and
roses, the latter, I conclude, stripped of their thorns.
What, let me ask, has been the consequence, in many cases,
of the abolition of flogging in schools ? Reluctance to
remove a pimple has not unfrequently transferred the
disease to the vitals : sparing the rod, for the correction of
minor faults, has ended in the commission of the highest
crimes. A man of great reputation (I should rather say
of great notoriety) sometimes punished the pupils under his
care by suspending them from the ceiling in baskets,
exposed to the derision of their school-fellows ; at other
times he pinned upon the clothes of the offender a number
of last dying speeches and confessions, and employed
another boy to walk before the culprit, making the usual
monotonous lamentation and outcry.
On one occasion this absurd, and really degrading
punishment was inflicted because a boy read with a tone,
although, I may observe in passing, that reading with
intonation is strictly natural, and therefore truly proper,
excepting in the excess. ^
1 This was the Lecturer's own mode of reading verse, and even in prose there was
an approach to intonation. I have heard him read Spenser with such an excess (to use
his own word) in this respect, that it almost amounted to a song. In blank verse it was
less, but still apparent. Milton's "Liberty of unlicensed Printing" was a favourite
piece of rhetorical writing, and portions of it I have heard Coleridge recite, never with-
out a sort of habitual rise and fall of the voice. — J. P. C.
4o6 The Sixth Lecture
Then, as to the character and effect of the punishment
just noticed, what must a parent of well regulated and
instructed mind think of the exhibition of his son in the
manner I have described ? Here, indeed, was debasement
of the worst and lowest kind ; for the feelings of a child
were outraged, and made to associate and connect them-
selves with the sentence on an abandoned and shameless
criminal. Who would not prefer the momentary, but
useful, impression of flogging to this gross attack upon the
moral feelings and self-respect of a boy ? Again, as to the
proper mode of reading : why is a tone in reading to be
visited as a criminal offence, especially when the estimate
of that offence arises out of the ignorance and incom-
petence of the master ? Every man who reads with true
sensibility, especially poetry, must read with a tone, since
it conveys, with additional effect, the harmony and rhythm
of the verse, without in the slightest degree obscuring the
meaning. That is the highest point of excellence in reading
which gives to every thing, whether of thought or language,
its most just expression. There may be a wrong tone, as
a right, and a wrong tone is of course to be avoided ; but
a poet writes in measure, and measure is best made ap-
parent by reading with a tone, which heightens the verse,
and does not in any respect lower the sense. I defy any
man, who has a true relish of the beauty of versification,
to read a canto of " the Fairy Queen," or a book of
** Paradise Lost," without some species of intonation.
In various instances we are hardly sensible of its exist-
ence, but it does exist, and persons have not scrupled to
say, and I believe it, that the tone of a good reader may be
set to musical notation. If in these, and in other remarks
that fall from me, I appear dogmatical, or dictatorial, it is
to be borne in mind, that every man who takes upon him-
self to lecture, requires that he should be considered by his
hearers capable of teaching something that is valuable, or
of saying something that is worth hearing. In a mixed
audience not a few are desirous of instruction, and some
require it ; but placed in my present situation I consider
myself, not as a man who carries moveables into an empty
house, but as a man who entering a generally well furnished
dwelling, exhibits a light which enables the owner to see
what is still wanting. I endeavour to introduce the means
of ascertaining what is, and is not, in a man's own mind.
The Sixth Lecture 407
Not long since, when I lectured at the Royal Institution,
I had the honour of sitting at the desk so ably occupied by
Sir Humphry Davy, who may be said to have elevated the
art of chemistry to the dignity of a science ; who has dis-
covered that one common law is applicable to the mind
and to the body, and who has enabled us to give a full and
perfect Amen to the great axiom of Lord Bacon, that
knowledge is power. In the delivery of that course I
carefully prepared my first essay, and received for it a cold
suffrage of approbation : from accidental causes I was
unable to study the exact form and language of my second
lecture, and when it was at an end, I obtained universal
and heart-felt applause. What a lesson was this to me not
to elaborate my materials, nor to consider too nicely the
expressions I should employ, but to trust mainly to the
extemporaneous ebullition of my thoughts. In this con-
viction I have ventured to come before you here ; and may
I add a hope, that what I offer will be received in a similar
spirit ? It is true that my matter may not be so accurately
arranged : it may not dovetail and fit at all times as nicely
as could be wished ; but you shall have my thoughts warm
from my heart, and fresh from my understanding : you
shall have the whole skeleton, although the bones may not
be put together with the utmost anatomical skill.
The immense advantage possessed by men of genius
over men of talents can be illustrated in no stronger
manner, than by a comparison of the benefits resulting to
mankind from the works of Homer and of Thucydides.
The merits and claims of Thucydides, as a historian, are
at once admitted ; but what care we for the incidents of
the Peloponnesian War ? An individual may be ignorant
of them, as far as regards the particular narrative of
Thucydides ; but woe to that statesman, or, I may say,
woe to that man, who has not availed himself of the wisdom
contained in " the tale of Troy divine ! "
Lord Bacon has beautifully expressed this idea, where he
talks of the instability and destruction of the monuments
of the greatest heroes, and compares them with the ever-
lasting writings of Homer, one word of which has never
been lost since the days of Pisistratus. Like a mighty ship,
they have passed over the sea of time, not leaving a mere
ideal track, which soon altogether disappears, but leaving a
train of glory in its wake, present and enduring, daily acting
4o8
The Sixth Lecture
upon our minds, and ennobling us by grand thoughts and
images : to this work, perhaps, the bravest of our soldiery
may trace and attribute some of their heroic achievements.
Just as the body is to the immortal mind, so are the actions
of our bodily powers in proportion to those by which,
independent of individual continuity,^ we are governed
for ever and ever ; by which we call, not only the narrow
circle of mankind (narrow comparatively) as they now
exist, our brethren, but by which we carry our being into
future ages, and call all who shall succeed us our brethren,
until at length we arrive at that exalted state, when we
shall welcome into Heaven thousands and thousands, who
will exclaim — " To you I owe the first development of my
imagination ; to you I owe the withdrawing of my mind
from the low brutal part of my nature, to the lofty, the
pure, and the perpetual."
Adverting to the subject more immediately before us,
I may observe that I have looked at the reign of Elizabeth,
interesting on many accounts, with peculiar pleasure and
satisfaction, because it furnished circumstances so favour-
able to the existence, and to the full development of the
powers of Shakespeare. The Reformation, just completed,
had occasioned unusual activity of mind, a passion, as it
were, for thinking, and for the discovery and use of words
capable of expressing the objects of thought and invention.
It was, consequently, the age of many conceits, and an age
when, for a time, the intellect stood superior to the moral
sense.
The difference between the state of mind in the reign
of Elizabeth, and in that of Charles I. is astonishing. In
the former period there was an amazing development of
power, but all connected with prudential purposes — an
attempt to reconcile the moral feeling with the full exercise
of the powers of the mind, and the accomplishment of
certain practical ends. Then lived Bacon, Burghley, Sir
Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, and a galaxy of great
men, statesmen, lawyers, politicians, philosophers, and
poets ; and it is lamentable that they should have degraded
1 I give this passage exactly as I find it in my notes ; but it strikes me that something
explanatory must have been accidentally omitted, and perhaps that the word I have
written " continuity " ought to be contiguity. I might have left out the whole from
"Just as the body " down to '* the pure and the perpetual," but 1 preferred showing
my own imperfectness to omitting what may be clear to others, though, at this distance
of time, not so evident to me. The general point and bearing of what Coleridge said
will be easily understood. — J. P. C.
The Sixth Lecture 409
their mighty powers to such base designs and purposes,
dissolving the rich pearls of their great faculties in a
worthless acid, to be drunken by a harlot. What was
seeking the favour of the Queen, to a man like Bacon, but
the mere courtship of harlotry ?
Compare this age with that of the republicans : that
indeed was an awful age, as compared with our own.
England may be said to have then overflowed from the
fulness of grand principle — from the greatness which men
felt in themselves, abstracted from the prudence with which
they ought to have considered, whether their principles
were, or were not, adapted to the condition of mankind at
large. Compare the revolution then effected with that of
a day not long past, when the bubbling-up and overflowing
was occasioned by the elevation of the dregs — when there
was a total absence of all principle, when the dregs had
risen from the bottom to the top, and thus converted into
scum, founded a monarchy to be the poisonous bane and
misery of the rest of mankind.
It is absolutely necessary to recollect, that the age in
which Shakspeare hved was one of great abilities applied
to individual and prudential purposes, and not an age of
high moral feeling and lofty principle, which gives a man
of genius the power of thinking of all things in reference
to all. If, then, we should find that Shakspeare took
these materials as they were presented to him, and yet to
aU effectual purposes produced the same grand result as
others attempted to produce in an age so much more
favourable, shall we not feel and acknowledge the purity
and holiness of genius — a light, which, however it might
shine on a dunghill, was as pure as the divine effluence
which created all the beauty of nature ?
One of the consequences of the idea prevalent at the
period when Shakspeare flourished, viz., that persons must
be men of talents in proportion as they were gentlemen,
renders certain characters in his dramas natural with
reference to the date when they were drawn : when we
read them we are aware that they are not of our age, and
in one sense they may be said to be of no age. A friend
of mine well remarked of Spenser, that he is out of space :
the reader never knows where he is, but still he knows,
from the consciousness within him, that all is as natural
and proper, as if the country where the action is laid were
4IO The Sixth Lecture
distinctly pointed out, and marked down in a map. Shak-
speare is as much out of time, as Spenser is out of space ;
yet we feel conscious, though we never knew that such
characters existed, that they might exist, and are satisfied
with the belief in their existence.
This circumstance enabled Shakspeare to paint truly,
and according to the colouring of nature, a vast number
of personages by the simple force of meditation : he had
only to imitate certain parts of his own character, or to
exaggerate such as existed in possibility, and they were
at once true to nature, and fragments of the divine mind
that drew them. Men who see the great luminary of our
system through various optical instruments declare that it
seems either square, triangular, or round, when in truth
it is still the sun, unchanged in shape and proportion. So
with the characters of our great poet : some may think
them of one form, and some of another ; but they are still
nature, still Shakspeare, and the creatures of his meditation.
When I use the term meditation, I do not mean that
our great dramatist was without observation of external
circumstances : quite the reverse ; but mere observation
may be able to produce an accurate copy, and even to
furnish to other men's minds more than the copyist pro-
fessed ; but what is produced can only consist of parts and
fragments, according to the means and extent of observa-
tion. Meditation looks at every character with inte'rest,
only as it contains something generally true, and such as
might be expressed in a philosophical problem.
Shakspeare's characters may be reduced to a few — that
is to say, to a few classes of characters. If you take his
gentlemen, for instance, Biron is seen again in Mercutio, in
Benedick, and in several others. They are men who com-
bine the politeness of the courtier with the faculties of high
intellect — those powers of combination and severance
which only belong to an intellectual mind. The wonder is
how Shakspeare can thus disguise himself, and possess such
miraculous powers of conveying what he means without
betraying the poet, and without even producing the con-
sciousness of him.
In the address of Mercutio regarding Queen Mab, which
is so well known that it is unnecessary to repeat it, is to be
noted all the fancy of the poet ; and the language in which
it is conveyed possesses such facility and felicity, that one
The Sixth Lecture 411
would almost say that it was impossible for it to be thought,
unless it were thought as naturally, and without effort,
as Mercutio repeats it. This is the great art by which
Shakspeare combines the poet and the gentleman through-
out, borrowing from his most amiable nature that which
alone could combine them, a perfect simplicity of mind, a
delight in all that is excellent for its own sake, without
reference to himself as causing it, and by that which dis-
tinguishes him from all other poets, alluded to by one of
his admirers in a short poem, where he tells us that while
Shakspeare possessed all the powers of a man, and more
than a man, yet he had all the feelings, the sensibilit}^ the
purity, innocence, and delicacy of an affectionate girl of
eighteen.
Before I enter upon the merits of the tragedy of '* Romeo
and Juliet," it will be necessary for me to say something of
the language of our country. And here I beg leave to
observe, that although I have announced these as lectures
upon Milton and Shakspeare, they are in reality, as also
stated in the prospectus, intended to illustrate the prin-
ciples of poetry : therefore, all must not be regarded as
mere digression which does not immediately and ex-
clusively refer to those writers. I have chosen them, in
order to bring under the notice of my hearers great general
truths ; in fact, whatever may aid myself, as well as others,
in deciding upon the claims of all writers of all countries.
The language, that is to say the particular tongue, in
which Shakspeare wrote, cannot be left out of considera-
tion. It will not be disputed, that one language may pos-
sess advantages which another does not enjoy ; and we
may state with confidence, that English excels all other lan-
guages in the number of its practical words. The French
may bear the palm in the names of trades, and in military
and diplomatic terms. Of the German it may be said,
that, exclusive of many mineralogical words, it is incom-
parable in its metaphysical and psychological force : in
another respect it nearly rivals the Greek,
" The learned Greek, rich in fit epithets,
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words ; " *
I mean in its capability of composition — of forming com-
1 From Act I., Scene i, of "Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five
Senses." This drama is reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. v. (last edition), and
\he lines may be found on p. 107 of that volume.
412 The Sixth Lecture
pound words. Italian is the sweetest and softest language ;
Spanish the most majestic. All these have their peculiar
faults ; but I never can agree that any language is unfit for
poetry, although different languages, from the condition
and circumstances of the people, may certainly be adapted
to one species of poetry more than to another.
Take the French as an example. It is, perhaps, the most
perspicuous and pointed language in the world, and there-
fore best fitted for conversation, for the expression of light
and airy passion, attaining its object by peculiar and
felicitous turns of phrase, which are evanescent, and, like
the beautifully coloured dust on the wings of a butterfly,
must not be judged by the test of touch. It appears as if
it were all surface and had no substratum, and it constantly
most dangerously tampers with morals, without positively
offending decency. As the language for what is called
modern genteel comedy all others must yield to French.
Italian can only be deemed second to Spanish, and
Spanish to Greek, which contains all the excellences of
all languages. Italian, though sweet and soft, is not
deficient in force and dignity ; and I may appeal to Ariosto,
as a poet who displays to the utmost advantage the use
of his native tongue for all purposes, whether of passion,
sentiment, humour, or description.
But in English I find that which is possessed by no other
modern language, and which, as it were, appropriates it to
the drama. It is a language made out of many, and it has
consequently many words, which originally had the same
meaning ; but in the progress of society those words have
gradually assumed different shades of meaning. Take
any homogeneous language, such as German, and try to
translate into it the following lines : —
" But not to one, in this benighted age,
Is that diviner inspiration given.
That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page.
The pomp and prodigality of heaven."
Gray's Stanzas to Bentley.
In German it would be necessary to say " the pomp
and spendthriftness of heaven," because the German has
not, as we have, one word with two such distinct meanings,
one expressing the nobler, the other the baser idea of the
same action.
The monosyllabic character of English enables us,
The Sixth Lecture 413
besides, to express more meaning in a shorter compass than
can be done in any other language. In truth, EngUsh
may be called the harvest of the unconscious wisdom of
various nations, and was not the formation of any particu-
lar time, or assemblage of individuals. Hence the number
of its passionate phrases — its metaphorical terms, not
borrowed from poets, but adopted by them. Our com-
monest people, when excited by passion, constantly employ
them : if a mother lose her child she is full of the wildest
fancies, and the words she uses assume a tone of dignity ;
for the constant hearing and reading of the Bible and
Liturgy clothes her thoughts not only in the most natural,
but in the most beautiful forms of language.
I have been induced to offer these remarks, in order to
obviate an objection often made against Shakspeare on
the ground of the multitude of his conceits. I do not
pretend to justify every conceit, and a vast number have
been most unfairly imputed to him ; for I am satisfied that
many portions of scenes attributed to Shakspeare were
never written by him. I admit, however, that even in
those which bear the strongest characteristics of his mind,
there are some conceits not strictly to be vindicated.
The notion against which I declare war is, that whenever
a conceit is met with it is unnatural. People who enter-
tain this opinion forget, that had they lived in the age
of Shakspeare, they would have deemed them natural.
Dry den in his translation of Juvenal has used the words
" Look round the world," which are a literal version of
the original ; but Dr. Johnson has swelled and expanded
this expression into the following couplet : —
" Let observation, Avith extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru ; **
Vanity of Human Wishes.
mere bombast and tautology ; as much as to say, " Let
observation with extensive observation observe mankind
extensively."
Had Dr. Johnson lived in the time of Shakspeare, or
even of Dry den, he would never have been guilty of such
an outrage upon common sense and common language ;
and if people would, in idea, throw themselves back a
couple of centuries, they would find that conceits, and even
puns, were very allowable, because very natural. Puns
414 The Sixth Lecture
often arise out of a mingled sense of injury, and contempt
of the person inflicting it, and, as it seems to me, it is a
natural way of expressing that mixed feeling. I could
point out puns in Shakspeare, where they appear almost
as if the first openings of the mouth of nature — where
nothing else could so properly be said. This is not peculiar
to puns, but is of much wider application : read any part
of the works of our great dramatist, and the conviction
comes upon you irresistibly, not only that what he puts
into the mouths of his personages might have been said,
but that it must have been said, because nothing so proper
could have been said.
In a future lecture I will enter somewhat into the history
of conceits, and shew the wise use that has heretofore been
made of them. I will now (and I hope it will be received
with favour) attempt a defence of conceits and puns,
taking my examples mainly from the poet under considera-
tion. I admit, of course, that they may be misapplied ;
but throughout life, I may say, I never have discovered
the wrong use of a thing, without having previously dis-
covered the right use of it. To the young I would remark,
that it is always unwise to judge of anything by its defects :
the first attempt ought to be to discover its excellences.
If a man come into my company and abuse a book, his
invectives coming down like water from a shower bath, I
never feel obliged to him : he probably tells me no news,
for all works, even the best, have defects, and they are
easily seen ; but if a man show me beauties, I thank him
for his information, because, in my time, I have unfortu-
nately gone through so many volumes that have had little
or nothing to recommend them. Always begin with the
good — a Jove principium — and the bad will make itself
evident enough, quite as soon as is desirable.
I will proceed to speak of Shakspeare's wit, in connexion
with his much abused puns and conceits ; because an
excellent writer, who has done good service to the public
taste by driving out the nonsense of the Italian school, has
expressed his surprise, that aU the other excellences of
Shakspeare were, in a greater or less degree, possessed by
his contemporaries : thus, Ben Jonson had one qualifica-
tion, Massinger another, while he declares that Beaumont
and Fletcher had equal knowledge of human nature, with
more variety. The point in which none of them had
The Sixth Lecture 415
approached Shakspeare, according to this writer, was his
wit. I own, I was somewhat shocked to see it gravely said
in print, that the quahty by which Shakspeare was to be
individualised from all others was, what is ordinarily called,
wit. I had read his plays over and over, and it did not
strike me that wit was his great and characteristic superi-
ority. In reading Voltaire, or (to take a standard and most
witty comedy cls an example) in reading ** The School for
Scandal," I never experienced the same sort of feeling as
in reading Shakspeare.
That Shakspeare has wit is indisputable, but it is not
the same kind of wit as in other writers : his wit is blended
with the other qualities of his works, and is, by its nature,
capable of being so blended. It appears in all parts of his
productions, in his tragedies, comedies, and histories : it is
not like the wit of Voltaire, and of many modern writers,
to whom the epithet " witty " has been properly apphed,
whose wit consists in a mere combination of words ; but
in at least nine times out of ten in Shakspeare, the wit is
produced not by a combination of words, but by a com-
bination of images.
It is not always easy to distinguish between wit and
fancy. When the whole pleasure received is derived from
surprise at an unexpected turn of expression, then I call
it wit ; but when the pleasure is produced not only by
surprise, but also by an image which remains with us and
gratifies for its own sake, then I call it fancy. I know of
no mode so satisfactory of distinguishing between wit and
fancy. I appeal to the recollection of those who hear me,
whether the greater part of what passes for wit in Shak-
speare, is not most exquisite humour, heightened by a
figure, and attributed to a particular character ? Take
the instance of the flea on Bardolph's nose, which Falstaff
compares to a soul suft'ering in purgatory. The images
themselves, in cases like this, afford a great part of the
pleasure.
These remarks are not without importance in forming
a judgment of poets and writers in general : there is a wide
difference between the talent which gives a sort of electric
surprise by a mere turn of phrase, and that higher ability
which produces surprise by a permanent medium, and
always leaves something behind it, which satisfies the
mind as well as tickles the hearing. The first belongs to
4i6 The Sixth Lecture
men of cleverness, who, having been long in the world,
have observed the turns of phrase which please in company,
and which, passing away the moment, are passed in a
moment, being no longer recollected than the time they
take in utterance. We must all have seen and known
such people ; and I remember saying of one of them that
he was like a man who squandered his estate in farthings :
he gave away so many, that he must needs have been
wealthy. This sort of talent by no means constitutes
genius, although it has some affinity to it.
The wit of Shakspeare is, as it were, like the flourishing
of a man's stick, when he is walking, in the full flow of
animal spirits : it is a sort of exuberance of hilarity which
disburdens, and it resembles a conductor, to distribute a
portion of our gladness to the surrounding air. While,
however, it disburdens, it leaves behind what is weightiest
and most important, and what most contributes to some
direct aim and purpose.
I will now touch upon a very serious charge against
Shakspeare — that of indecency and immorality. Many
have been those who have endeavoured to exculpate him
by saying, that it was the vice of his age ; but he was
too great to require exculpation from the accidents of any
age. These persons have appealed to Beaumont and
Fletcher, to Massinger, and to other less eminent drama-
tists, to prove that what is complained of was common to
them all. Oh ! shame and sorrow, if it were so : there is
nothing common to Shakspeare and to other writers of his
day — not even the language they employed.
In order to form a proper judgment upon this point, it
is necessary to make a distinction between manners and
morals ; and that distinction being once established, and
clearly comprehended, Shakspeare will appear as pure a
writer, in reference to all that we ought to be, and to all
that we ought to feel, as he is wonderful in reference to
his intellectual faculties.
By manners I mean what is dependent on the par-
cular customs and fashions of the age. Even in a state
of comparative barbarism as to manners, there may be,
and there is, morality. But give me leave to say that
we have seen much worse times than those — times when
the mind was so enervated and degraded, that the most
distant associations, that could possibly connect our ideas
The Sixth Lecture 417
with the basest feeUngs, immediately brought forward
those base feeUngs, without reference to the nobler im-
pulses ; thus destroying the little remnant of humanity,
excluding from the mind what is good, and introducing
what is bad to keep the bestial nature company.
On looking through Shakspeare, offences against
decency and manners may certainly be pointed out ;
but let us examine history minutely, and we shall find
that this was the ordinary language of the time, and then
let us ask, where is the offence ? The offence, so to call
it, was not committed wantonly, and for the sake of
offending, but for the sake of merriment ; for what is
most observable in Shakspeare, in reference to this topic,
is that what he says is always calculated to raise a gust
of laughter, that would, as it were, blow a.way all impure
ideas, if it did not excite abhorrence of them.
Above all, let us compare him with some modern writers,
the servile imitators of the French, and we shall receive
a most instructive lesson. I may take the liberty of
reading the following note, written by me after witnessing
the performance of a modern play at Malta, about nine
years ago : — "I went to the theatre, and came away
without waiting for the entertainment. The longer I live,
the more I am impressed with the exceeding immorality
of modern plays : I can scarcely refrain from anger and
laughter at the shamelessness, and the absurdity of the
presumption which presents itself, when I think of their
pretences to superior morality, compared with the plays
of Shakspeare."
Here let me pause for one moment ; for while reading
my note I call to mind a novel, on the sofa or toilet of
nearly every woman of quality, in which the author
gravely warns parents against the indiscreet communica-
tion to their children of the contents of some parts of
the Bible, as calculated to injure their morals. Another
modern author, who has done his utmost to undermine
the innocence of the young of both sexes, has the effrontery
to protest against the exhibition of the bare leg of a
Corinthian female. My note thus pursues the subject : —
" In Shakspeare there are a few gross speeches, but it
is doubtful to me if they would produce any ill effect on
an unsullied mind ; while in some modern plays, as well as
in some modern novels, there is a systematic undermining
o
4i8 The Sixth Lecture
of all morality : they are written in the true cant ol
humanity, that has no object but to impose ; where
virtue is not placed in action, or in the habits that lead to
action, but, like the title of a book I have heard of, they
are ' a hot huddle of indefinite sensations.' In these the
lowest incitements to piety are obtruded upon us ; like
an impudent rascal at a masquerade, who is well known
in spite of his vizor, or known by it, and yet is allowed to
be impudent in virtue of his disguise. In short, I appeal
to the whole of Shakspeare's writings, whether his gross-
ness is not the mere sport of fancy, dissipating low feelings
by exciting the intellect, and only injuring while it offends ?
Modern dramas injure in consequence of not offending.
Shakspeare's worst passages are grossnesses against the
degradations of our nature : those of our modern plays
are too often delicacies directly in favour of them."
Such was my note, made nine years ago, and I have
since seen every reason to adhere firmly to the opinions
it expresses.
In my next lecture I will proceed to an examination of
" Romeo and Juliet ; " and I take that tragedy, because
in it are to be found aU the crude materials of future
excellence. The poet, the great dramatic poet, is through-
out seen, but the various parts of the composition are
not blended with such harmony as in some of his after
writings. I am directed to it, more than all, for this
reason, — because it affords me the best opportunity of
introducing Shakspeare as a delineator of female char-
acter, and of love in all its forms, and with all the emotions
which deserve that sweet and man-elevating name.
It has been remarked, I believe by Dryden, that Shak-
speare wrote for men only, but Beaumont and Fletcher
(or rather " the gentle Fletcher ") for women. I wish to
begin by shewing, not only that this is not true, but that,
of all .writers for the stage, he only has drawn the female
character with that mixture of the real and of the ideal
which belongs to it ; and that there is no one female
personage in the plays of all his contemporaries, of whom
a man, seriously examining his heart and his good sense,
can say " Let that woman be my companion through
hfe : let her be the subject of my suit, and the reward of
my success."
END OF THE SIXTH LECTURE.
The Seventh Lecture 419
THE SEVENTH LECTURE.
In a former lecture I endeavoured to point out the union
of the Poet and the Philosopher, or rather the warm embrace
between them, in the " Venus and Adonis " and " Lucrece "
of Shakspeare. From thence I passed on to " Love's
Labour's Lost," as the link between his character as a Poet,
and his art as a Dramatist ; and I shewed that, although in
that work the former was still predominant, yet that the
germs of his subsequent dramatic power were easily
discernible.
I will now, as I promised in my last, proceed to " Romeo
and Juliet," not because it is the earliest, or among the
earliest of Shakspeare's works of that kind, but because
in it are to be found specimens, in degree, of all the ex-
cellences which he afterwards displayed in his more
perfect dramas, but differing from them in being less
forcibly evidenced, and less happily combined : all the
parts are more or less present, but they are not united
with the same harmony.
There are, however, in " Romeo and Juliet " passages
where the poet's whole excellence is evinced, so that
nothing superior to them can be met with in the pro-
ductions of his after years. The main distinction between
this play and others is, as I said, that the parts are less
happily combined, or to borrow a phrase from the painter,
the whole work is less in keeping. Grand portions are
produced : we have limbs of giant growth ; but the
production, as a whole, in which each part gives delight
for itself, and the whole, consisting of these delightful
parts, communicates the highest intellectual pleasure and
satisfaction, is the result of the application of judgment
and taste. These are not to be attained but by painful
study, and to the sacrifice of the stronger pleasures derived
from the dazzling light which a man of genius throws over
every circumstance, and where we are chiefly struck
by vivid and distinct images. Taste is an attainment
after a poet has been discipHned by experience, and has
added to genius that talent by which he knows what part
of his genius he can make acceptable, and intelligible to
the portion of mankind for which he writes.
In my mind it would be a hopeless symptom, as regards
420 The Seventh Lecture
genius, if I found a young man with anything Uke perfect
taste. In the earUer works of Shakspeare we have a pro-
fusion of double epithets, and sometimes even the coarsest
terms are employed, if they convey a more vivid image ;
but by degrees the associations are connected with the
image they are designed to impress, and the poet descends
from the ideal into the real world so far as to conjoin both —
to give a sphere of active operations to the ideal, and to
elevate and refine the real.
In " Romeo and Juliet " the principal characters may
be divided into two classes : in one class passion — the
passion of love — is drawn and drawn truly, as weU as
beautifully ; but the persons are not individualised farther
than as the actor appears on the stage. It is a very just
description and development of love, without giving, if I
may so express myself, the philosophical history of it —
without shewing how the man became acted upon by that
particular passion, but leading it through all the incidents
of the drama, and rendering it predominant.
Tybalt is, in himself, a commonplace personage. And
here allow me to remark upon a great distinction between
Shakspeare, and all who have written in imitation of him.
I know no character in his plays (unless indeed Pistol be
an exception) which can be called the mere portrait of an
individual : while the reader feels all the satisfaction
arising from individuality, yet that very individual is a
sort of class character, and this circumstance renders
Shakspeare the poet of all ages.
Tybalt is a man abandoned to his passions — with all the
pride of family, only because he thought it belonged to
him as a member of that family, and valuing himself
highly, simply because he does not care for death. This
indifference to death is perhaps more common than any
other feeling : men are apt to flatter themselves extra-
vagantly, merely because they possess a quality which it
is a disgrace not to have, but which a wise man never puts
forward, but when it is necessary.
Jeremy Taylor in one part of his voluminous works,
speaking of a great man, says that he was naturally a
coward, as indeed most men are, knowing the value of life,
but the power of his reason enabled him, when required,
to conduct himself with uniform courage and hardihood.
The good bishop, perhaps, had in his mind a story, told by
The Seventh Lecture 421
one of the ancients, of a Philosopher and a Coxcomb, on
board the same ship during a storm : the Coxcomb reviled
the Philosopher for betraying marks of fear : " Why are
you so frightened ? I am not afraid of being drowned :
I do not care a farthing for my life." — " You are perfectly
right," said the Philosopher, " for your life is not worth a
farthing."
Shakspeare never takes pains to make his characters
win your esteem, but leaves it to the general command of
the passions, and to poetic justice. It is most beautiful
to observe, in " Romeo and Juliet," that the characters
principally engaged in the incidents are preserved innocent
from all that could lower them in our opinion, while the
rest of the personages, deserving little interest in them-
selves, derive it from being instrumental in those situations
in which the more important personages develope their
thoughts and passions.
Look at Capulet — a worthy, noble-minded old man of
high rank, with all the impatience that is likely to accom-
pany it. It is delightful to see all the sensibilities of our
nature so exquisitely called forth ; as if the poet had the
hundred arms of the polypus, and had thrown them out
in aU directions to catch the predominant feeling. We may
see in Capulet the manner in which anger seizes hold of
everything that comes in its way, in order to express itself,
as in the lines where he reproves Tybalt for his fierceness of
behaviour, which led him to wish to insult a Montague, and
disturb the merriment. —
" Go to, go to ;
You are a saucy boy. Is't so, indeed ?
This trick may chance to scath you ; — I know what.
You must contrary me ! marry, 'tis time. —
Well said, my hearts ! — You are a princox : go :
Be quiet or — More light, more light ! — For shame !
I'll make you quiet. — What ! cheerly, my hearts ! "
Act I., Scene $.
The line
" This trick may chance to scath you ; — I know what,"
was an allusion to the legac}/ Tybalt might expect ; and
then, seeing the lights burn dimly, Capulet turns his anger
against the servants. Thus we see that no one passion
Is so predominant, but that it includes all the parts of the
character, and the reader never has a mere abstract of a
422 The Seventh Lecture
passion, as of wrath or ambition, but the whole man is
presented to him — the one predominant passion acting, if
I may so say, as the leader of the band to the rest.
It could not be expected that the poet should introduce
such a character as Hamlet into every play ; but even
in those personages, which are subordinate to a hero so
eminently philosophical, the passion is at least rendered
instructive, and induces the reader to look with a keener
eye, and a finer judgment into human nature.
Shakspeare has this advantage over all other dramatists
— that he has availed himself of his psychological genius
to develope all the minutiae of the human heart : shewing
us the thing that, to common observers, he seems solely
intent upon, he makes visible what we should not other-
wise have seen : just as, after looking at distant objects
through a telescope, when we behold them subsequently
with the naked eye, we see them with greater distinctness,
and in more detail, than we should otherwise have done.
Mercutio is one of our poet's truly Shakspearean char-
acters ; for throughout his plays, but especially in those
of the highest order, it is plain that the personages were
drawn rather from meditation than from observation, or
to speak correctly, more from observation, the child of
meditation. It is comparatively easy for a man to go
about the world, as if with a pocket-book in his hand,
carefully noting down what he sees and hears : by practice
he acquires considerable facility in representing what he
has observed, himself frequently unconscious of its worth,
or its bearings. This is entirely different from the observa-
tion of a mind, v/hich, having formed a theory and a
system upon its own nature, remarks all things that are
examples of its tmth, confirming it in that truth, and,
above all, enabling it to convey the truths of philosophy,
as mere effects derived from, what we may call, the outward
watchings of life.
Hence it is that Shakspeare's favourite characters are
full of such lively intellect. Mercutio is a man possessing
all the elements of a poet : the whole world was, as it were,
subject to his law of association. Whenever he wishes to
impress anything, all things become his servants for the
purpose : all things tell the same tale, and sound in unison.
This faculty, moreover, is combined with the manners
and feelings of a perfect gentleman, himself utterly un-
The Seventh Lecture 423
conscious of his powers. By his loss it was contrived that
the whole catastrophe of the tragedy should be brought
about : it endears him to Romeo, and gives to the death of
Mercutio an importance which it could not otherwise have
acquired.
I say this in answer to an observation, I think by Dry den
(to which indeed Dr. Johnson has fully replied), that Shak-
speare having carried the part of Mercutio as far as he
could, till his genius was exhausted, had killed him in the
third Act, to get him out of the way. What shallow
nonsense ! As I have remarked, upon the death of
Mercutio the whole catastrophe depends ; it is produced
by it. The scene in which it occurs serves to show how
indifference to any subject but one, and aversion to activity
on the part of Romeo, may be overcome and roused to the
most resolute and determined conduct. Had not Mercutio
been rendered so amiable and so interesting, we could not
have felt so strongly the necessity for Romeo's interference,
connecting it immediately, and passionately, with the
future fortunes of the lover and his mistress.
But what am I to say of the Nurse ? We have been
told that her character is the mere fruit of observation —
that it is like Swift's " Polite Conversation," certainly the
most stupendous work of human memory, and of un-
ceasingly active attention to what passes around us, upon
record. The Nurse in " Romeo and Juliet " has some-
times been compared to a portrait by Gerard Dow, in
which every hair was so exquisitely painted, that it would
bear the test of the microscope. Now, I appeal confidently
to my hearers whether the closest observation of the
manners of one or two old nurses would have enabled
Shakspeare to draw this character of admirable generalisa-
tion ? Surely not. Let any man conjure up in his mind
all the quahties and peculiarities that can possibly belong
to a nurse, and he will find them in Shakspeare's picture
of the old woman : nothing is omitted. This effect is not
produced by mere observation. The great prerogative
of genius (and Shakspeare felt and availed himself of it)
is now to swell itself to the dignity of a god, and now to
subdue and keep dormant some part of that lofty nature,
and to descend even to the lowest character — to become
everything, in fact, but the vicious.
Thus, in the Nurse you have all the garrulity of old-
424 The Seventh Lecture
age, and all its fondness ; for the affection of old-age is one
of the greatest consolations of humanity. I have often
thought what a melancholy world this would be without
children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.
You have also in the Nurse the arrogance of ignorance,
with the pride of meanness at being connected with a
great family. You have the grossness, too, which that
situation never removes, though it sometimes suspends it ;
and, arising from that grossness, the little low vices
attendant upon it, which, indeed, in such minds are
scarcely vices. — Romeo at one time was the most delight-
ful and excellent young man, and the Nurse all willingness
to assist him ; but her disposition soon turns in favour
of Paris, for whom she professes precisely the same admira-
tion. How wonderfully are these low peculiarities con-
trasted with a young and pure mind, educated under
different circumstances !
Another point ought to be mentioned as characteristic
of the ignorance of the Nurse : — it is, that in all her re-
collections, she assists herself by the remembrance of
visual circumstances. The great difference, in this respect,
between the cultivated and the uncultivated mind is
this — that the cultivated mind will be found to recal
the past by certain regular trains of cause and effect ;
whereas, with the uncultivated mind, the past is recalled
wholly by coincident images, or facts which happened
at the same time. This position is fully exemplified in
the following passages put into the mouth of the Nurse : —
*' Even or odd, of all days in the year,
Come Lammas eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she — God rest all Christian souls ! —
Were of an age. — Well, Susan is with God ;
She was too good for me. But, as I said,
On Lammas eve at night shall she be fourteen ;
That shall she, marry : I remember it well.
'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years ;
And she was wean'd, — I never shall forget it, —
Of all the days of the year, upon that day ;
For I had then laid wormwood to my dug.
Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall :
My lord and you were then at Mantua. —
Nay, I do bear a brain : — but, as I said.
When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool.
To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug !
Shake, quoth the dove-house : 'twas no need, I trow,
The Seventh Lecture 425
To bid me trudge.
And since that time it is eleven years ;
For then she could stand alone."
Act I., Scene 3.
She afterwards goes on with similar visual impressions,
so true to the character. — More is here brought into one
portrait than could have been ascertained by one man's
mere observation, and without the introduction of a single
incongruous point.
I honour, I love, the works of Fielding as much, or
perhaps more, than those of any other writer of fiction
of that kind : take Fielding in his characters of postillions,
landlords, and landladies, waiters, or indeed, of anybody
who had come before his eye, and nothing can be more
true, more happy, or more humorous ; but in all his chief
personages, Tom Jones for instance, where Fielding was
not directed by observation, where he could not assist
himself by the close copying of what he saw, where it is
necessary that something should take place, some words
be spoken, or some object described, which he could not
have witnessed (his soliloquies for example, or the inter-
view between the hero and Sophia Western before the
reconciliation) and I will venture to say, loving and honour-
ing the man and his productions as I do, that nothing can
be more forced and unnatural : the language is without
vivacity or spirit, the whole matter is incongruous, and
totally destitute of psychological truth.
On the other hand, look at Shakspeare : where can
any character be produced that does not speak the language
of nature ? where does he not put into the mouths
of his dramatis personcB, be they high or low. Kings or
Constables, precisely what they must have said ? Where,
from observation, could he learn the language proper
to Sovereigns, Queens, Noblemen or Generals ? yet he
invariably uses it. — Where, from observation, could he
have learned such lines as these, which are put into the
mouth of Othello, when he is talking to lago of Brabantio ?
" Let him do his spite :
My services, which I have done the signiory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints. 'Tis yet to know,
Which, when I know that boasting is an honour,
I shall promulgate, I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege ; and my demerits
May speak, unbonneted, to as proud a fortune
426 The Seventh Lecture
As this that I have reach'd : for know, lago.
But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."
Act I., Scene 2.
I ask where was Shakspeare to observe such language
as this ? If he did observe it, it was with the inward eye
of meditation upon his own nature : for the time, he
became Othello, and spoke as Othello, in such circum-
stances, must have spoken.
Another remark I may make upon " Romeo and Juliet "
is, that in this tragedy the poet is not, as I have hinted,
entirely blended with the dramatist, — at least, not in the
degree to be afterwards noticed in " Lear," " Hamlet,"
" Othello," or " Macbeth." Capulet and Montague not
unfrequently talk a language only belonging to the poet,
and not so characteristic of, and peculiar to, the passions
of persons in the situations in which they are placed — a
mistake, or rather an indistinctness, which many of our
later dramatists have carried through the whole of their
productions.
When I read the song of Deborah, I never think that
she is a poet, although I think the song itself a sublime
poem : it is as simple a dithyrambic production as exists
in any language ; but it is the proper and characteristic
effusion of a woman highly elevated by triumph, by the
natural hatred of oppressors, and resulting from a bitter
sense of wrong : it is a song of exultation on deliverance
from these evils, a deliverance accomplished by herself.
When she exclaims, " The inhabitants of the villages
ceased, they ceased in Israel, until that I, Deborah, arose,
that I arose a mother in Israel," it is poetry in the highest
sense : we have no reason, however, to suppose that if she
had not been agitated by passion, and animated by victory,
she would have been able so to express herself ; or that
if she had been placed in different circumstances, she
would have used such language of truth and passion. We
are to remember that Shakspeare, not placed under cir-
cumstances of excitement, and only wrought upon by
his own vivid and vigorous imagination, writes a language
that invariably, and intuitively becomes the condition and
position of each character.
On the other hand, there is a language not descriptive
The Seventh Lecture 427
of passion, nor uttered under the influence of it, which is
at the same time poetic, and shows a high and active
fancy, as when Capulet says to Paris, —
" Such comfort as do lusty young men feel,
When well-apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds, shall you this night
Inherit at my house."
Act I., Scene 2.
Here the poet may be said to speak, rather than the
dramatist ; and it would be easy to adduce other passages
from this play, where Shakspeare, for a moment forgetting
the character, utters his own words in his own person.
In my mind, what have often been censured as Shak-
speare's conceits are completely justifiable, as belonging
to the state, age, or feeling of the individual. Some-
times, when they cannot be vindicated on these grounds,
they may well be excused by the taste of his own and of
the preceding age ; as for instance, in Romeo's speech,
" Here's much to do with hate, but more with love : —
Why then, O brawling love ! O loving hate I
O anything, of nothing first created !
O heavy lightness ! serious vanity !
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms !
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health !
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is ! "
Act I., Scene i.
I dare not pronounce such passages as these to be
absolutely unnatural, not merely because I consider the
author a much better judge than I can be, but because I
can understand and allow for an effort of the mind, when
it would describe what it cannot satisfy itself with the
description of, to reconcile opposites and qualify contra-
dictions, leaving a middle state of mind more strictly
appropriate to the imagination than any other, when it
is, as it were, hovering between images. As soon as it is
fixed on one image, it becomes understanding ; but while
it is unfixed and wavering between them, attaching itself
permanently to none, it is imagination. Such is the fine
description of Death in Milton : —
" The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb.
Or substance might be call'd, that shadow seem'd.
428 The Seventh Lecture
For each seem'd either : black it stood as night ;
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart : what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on."
Paradise Lost, Book II.
The grandest efforts of poetry are where the imagination
is called forth, not to produce a distinct form, but a strong
working of the mind, still offering what is still repelled,
and again creating what is again rejected ; the result being
what the poet wishes to impress, namely, the substitution
of a sublime feeling of the unimaginable for a mere image.
I have sometimes thought that the passage just read might
be quoted as exhibiting the narrow limit of painting, as
compared with the boundless power of poetry : painting
cannot go beyond a certain point ; poetry rejects all control,
all confinement. Yet we know that sundry painters have
attempted pictures of the meeting between Satan and
Death at the gates of Hell ; and how was Death repre-
sented ? Not as Milton has described him, but by the
most defined thing that can be imagined — a skeleton, the
dryest and hardest image that it is possible to discover ;
which, instead of keeping the mind in a state of activit}^
reduces it to the merest passivity, — an image, compared
with which a square, a triangle, or any other mathematical
figure, is a luxuriant fancy.
It is a general but mistaken notion that, because some
forms of writing, and some combinations of thought, are
not usual, they are not natural ; but we are to recollect
that the dramatist represents his characters in every situa-
tion of life and in every state of mind, and there is no form
of language that may not be introduced with effect by a
great and judicious poet, and yet be most strictly according
to nature. Take punning, for instance, which may be the
lowest, but at all events is the most harmless, kind of wit,
because it never excites envy. A pun may be a necessary
consequence of association : one man, attempting to prove
something that was resisted by another, might, when
agitated by strong feeling, employ a term used by his
adversary with a directly contrary meaning to that for
which that adversary had resorted to it : it might come
into his mind as one way, and sometimes the best, of reply-
ing to that adversary. This form of speech is generally
produced by a mixture of anger and contempt, and punning
is a natural mode of expressing them.
The Seventh Lecture 429
It is my intention to pass over none of the important
so-called conceits of Shakspeare, not a few of which are
introduced into his later productions with great propriety
and effect. We are not to forget, that at the time he lived
there was an attempt at, and an affectation of, quaintness
and adornment, which emanated from the Court, and
against which satire was directed by Shakspeare in the
character of Osrick in Hamlet. Among the schoolmen of
that age, and earlier, nothing was more common than the
use of conceits : it began with the revival of letters, and
the bias thus given was very generally felt and acknow-
ledged.
I have in my possession a dictionary of phrases, in which
the epithets applied to love, hate, jealousy, and such
abstract terms, are arranged ; and they consist almost
entirely of words taken from Seneca and his imitators, or
from the schoolmen, showing perpetual antithesis, and
describing the passions by the conjunction and combination
of things absolutely irreconcileable. In treating the matter
thus, I am aware that I am only palliating the practice in
Shakspeare : he ought to have had nothing to do with
merely temporary peculiarities : he wrote not for his own
only, but for aU ages, and so far I admit the use of some of
his conceits to be a defect. They detract sometimes from
his universality as to time, person, and situation.
If we were able to discover, and to point out the peculiar
faults, as well as the peculiar beauties of Shakspeare, it
would materially assist us in deciding what authority ought
to be attached to certain portions of what are generally
called his works. If we met with a play, or certain scenes
of a play, in which we could trace neither his defects nor
his excellences, we should have the strongest reason for
believing that he had had no hand in it. In the case of
scenes so circumstanced we might come to the conclusion
that they were taken from the older plays, which, in some
instances, he reformed or altered, or that they were inserted
afterwards by some under-hand, in order to please the mob.
If a drama by Shakspeare turned out to be too heavy for
popular audiences, the clown might be caUed in to lighten
the representation ; and if it appeared that what was
added was not in Shakspeare' s manner, the conclusion
would be inevitable, that it was not from Shakspeare's
pen.
430 The Seventh Lecture
It remains for me to speak of the hero and heroine, of
Romeo and JuUet themselves ; and I shall do so with un-
affected diffidence, not merely on account of the delicacy,
bat of the great importance of the subject. I feel that it
is impossible to defend Shakspeare from the most cruel of
all charges, — that he is an immoral writer — without enter-
ing fully into his mode of pourtraying female characters,
and of displaying the passion of love. It seems to me, that
he has done both with greater perfection than any other
writer of the known world, perhaps with the single excep-
tion of Milton in his delineation of Eve.
When I have heard it said, or seen it stated, that Shak-
speare wrote for man, but the gentle Fletcher for woman,
it has always given me something like acute pain, because
to me it seems to do the greatest injustice to Shakspeare :
when, too, I remember how much character is formed by
what we read, I cannot look upon it as a light question, to
be passed over as a mere amusement, like a game of cards or
chess. I never have been able to tame down my mind to
think poetry a sport, or an occupation for idle hours.
Perhaps there is no more sure criterion of refinement in
moral character, of the purity of intellectual intention,
and of the deep conviction and perfect sense of what our
own nature really is in all its combinations, than the
different definitions different men would give of love. I
I will not detain you by stating the various known defini-
tions, some of which it may be better not to repeat : I will
rather give you one of my own, which, I apprehend, is
equally free from the extravagance of pretended Platonism
(which, like other things which super-moralise, is sure to
demoralise) and from its grosser opposite.
Considering myself and my fellow-men as a sort of link
between heaven and earth, being composed of body and
soul, with power to reason and to will, and with that
perpetual aspiration which tells us that this is ours for
a while, but it is not ourselves ; considering man, I say,
in this two-fold character, yet united in one person, I con-
ceive that there can be no correct definition of love which
does not correspond with our being, and with that sub-
ordination of one part to another which constitutes our
perfection. I would say therefore that —
" Love is a desire of the whole being to be united to
some thing, or some being, felt necessary to its complete-
The Seventh Lecture 431
ness, by the most perfect means that nature permits,
and reason dictates."
It is inevitable to every noble mind, whether man or
woman, to feel itself, of itself, imperfect and insufficient,
not as an animal only, but as a moral being. How wonder-
fully, then, has Providence contrived for us, by making
that which is necessary to us a step in our exaltation to
a higher and nobler state ! The Creator has ordained
that one should possess qualities which the other has not,
and the union of both is the most complete ideal of human
character. In everything the blending of the similar
with the dissimilar is the secret of all pure delight. Who
shall dare to stand alone, and vaunt himself, in himself,
sufficient ? In poetry it is the blending of passion with
order that constitutes perfection : this is still more
the case in morals, and more than all in the exclusive
attachment of the sexes.
True it is, that the world and its business may be
carried on without marriage ; but it is so evident that
Providence intended man (the only animal of all climates,
and whose reason is pre-eminent over instinct) to be the
master of the world, that marriage, or the knitting to-
gether of society by the tenderest, yet firmest ties, seems
ordained to render him capable of maintaining his superi-
ority over the brute creation. Man alone has been privi-
leged to clothe himself, and to do all things so as to make
him, as it were, a secondary creator of himself, and of
his own happiness or misery : in this, as in all, the image
of the Deity is impressed upon him.
Providence, then, has not left us to prudence only ; for
the power of calculation, which prudence implies, cannot
have existed, but in a state which pre-supposes marriage.
If God has done this, shall we suppose that he has given
us no moral sense, no yearning, which is something more
than animal, to secure that, without which man might
form a herd, but could not be a society ? The very idea
seems to breathe absurdity.
From this union arise the paternal, filial, brotherly and
sisterly relations of life ; and every state is but a family
magnified. All the operations of mind, in short, all that
distinguishes us from brutes, originate in the more perfect
state of domestic life. — One infallible criterion in forming
an opinion of a man is the reverence in which he holds
432 The Seventh Lecture
women. Plato has said, that in this way we rise from
sensuahty to affection, from affection to love, and from
love to the pure intellectual delight by which we become
worthy to conceive that infinite in ourselves, without
which it is impossible for man to believe in a God. In a
word, the grandest and most delightful of all promises
has been expressed to us by this practical state — our
marriage with the Redeemer of mankind.
I might safely appeal to every man who hears me, who
in youth has been accustomed to abandon himself to his
animal passions, whether when he first really fell in love,
the earliest symptom was not a complete change in his
manners, a contempt and a hatred of himself for having
excused his conduct by asserting, that he acted according
to the dictates of nature, that his vices were the inevit-
able consequences of youth, and that his passions at that
period of life could not be conquered ? The surest friend
of chastity is love : it leads us, not to sink the mind in
the body, but to draw up the body to the mind — the
immortal part of our nature. See how contrasted in this
respect are some portions of the works of writers, whom I
need not name, with other portions of the same works :
the ebullitions of comic humour have at times, by a
lamentable confusion, been made the means of debasing
our nature, while at other times, even in the same volume,
we are happy to notice the utmost purity, such as the
purity of love, which above all other qualities renders us
most pure and lovely.
Love is not, like hunger, a mere selfish appetite : it is
an associative quality. The hungry savage is nothing but
an animal, thinking only of the satisfaction of his stomach :
what is the first effect of love, but to associate the feeling
with every object in nature ? the trees whisper, the roses
exhale their perfumes, the nightingales sing, nay the very
skies smile in unison with the feeling of true and pure
love. It gives to every object in nature a power of the
heart, without which it would indeed be spiritless.
Shakspeare has described this passion in various states
and stages, beginning, as was most natural, with love in
the young. Does he open his play by making Romeo
and Juliet in love at first sight — at the first glimpse, as
any ordinary thinker would do ? Certainly not : he knew
what he was about, and how he was to accomplish what
The Seventh Lecture 433
he was about : he was to develope the whole passion, and
he commences with the first elements — that sense of
imperfection, that yearning to combine itself with some-
thing lovely. Romeo became enamoured of the idea he
had formed in his own mind, and then, as it were, christened
the first real being of the contrary sex as endowed with
the perfections he desired. He appears to be in love with
Rosaline ; but, in truth, he is in love only with his own
idea. He felt that necessity of being beloved which no
noble mind can be without. Then our poet, our poet
who so well knew human nature, introduces Romeo to
Juhet, and makes it not only a violent, but a permanent
love — a point for which Shakspeare has been ridiculed by
the ignorant and unthinking. Romeo is first represented
in a state most susceptible of love, and then, seeing Juliet,
he took and retained the infection.
This brings me to observe upon a characteristic of
Shakspeare, which belongs to a man of profound thought
and high genius. It has been too much the custom,
when anything that happened in his dramas could not
easily be explained by the few words the poet has em-
ployed, to pass it idly over, and to say that it is beyond
our reach, and beyond the power of philosophy — a sort
of terra incognita for discoverers — a great ocean to be
hereafter explored. Others have treated such passages
as hints and glimpses of something now non-existent,
as the sacred fragments of an ancient and ruined temple^
all the portions of which are beautiful, although their
particular relation to each other is unknown. Shak-
speare knew the human mind, and its most minute and
intimate workings, and he never introduces a word, or a
thought, in vain or out of place : if we do not understand
him, it is our own fault or the fault of copyists and typo-
graphers ; but study, and the possession of some small
stock of the knowledge by which he worked, will enable
us often to detect and explain his meaning. He never
wrote at random, or hit upon points of character and
conduct by chance ; and the smallest fragment of his
mind not unfrequently gives a clue to a most perfect,
regular, and consistent whole.
As I may not have another opportunity, the introduc-
tion of Friar Laurence into this tragedy enables me to
remark upon the different manner in which Shakspeare
434 The Seventh Lecture
has treated the priestly character, as compared with other
writers. In Beaumont and Fletcher priests are repre-
sented as a vulgar mockery ; and, as in others of their
dramatic personages, the errors of a few are mistaken
for the demeanour of the many : but in Shakspeare they
always carry with them our love and respect. He made
no injurious abstracts : he took no copies from the worst
parts of our nature ; and, like the rest, his characters of
priests are truly drawn from the general body.
It may strike some as singular, that throughout all his
productions he hsis never introduced the passion of avarice.
The truth is, that it belongs only to particular parts of our
nature, and is prevalent only in particular states of society ;
hence it could not, and cannot, be permanent. The Miser
of Moliere and Plautus is now looked upon as a species of
madman, and avarice as a species of madness. Elwes, of
whom everybody has heard, was an individual influenced
by an insane condition of mind ; but, as a passion, avarice
has disappeared. How admirably, then, did Shakspeare
foresee, that if he drew such a character it could not be
permanent ! he drew characters which would always be
natural, and therefore permanent, inasmuch as they were
not dependent upon accidental circumstances.
There is not one of the plays of Shakspeare that is built
upon anything but the best and surest foundation ; the
characters must be permanent — permanent while men
continue men, — because they stand upon what is absolutely
necessary to our existence. This cannot be said even of
some of the most famous authors of antiquity. Take the
capital tragedies of Orestes, or of the husband of Jocasta :
great as was the genius of the writers, these dramas have
an obvious fault, and the fault lies at the very root of the
action. In (Edipus a man is represented oppressed by fate
for a crime of which he was not morally guilty ; and while
we read we are obliged to say to ourselves, that in those
days they considered actions without reference to the real
guilt of the persons.
There is no character in Shakspeare in which envy is
pourtrayed, with one solitary exception — Cassius, in
" Julius Caesar " ; yet even there the vice is not hateful,
inasmuch as it is counterbalanced by a number of excellent
qualities and virtues. The poet leads the reader to suppose
that it is rather something constitutional, something
The Eighth Lecture 435
derived from his parents, something that he cannot avoid,
and not something that he has himself acquired ; thus
throwing the blame from the will of man to some inevitable
circumstance, and leading us to suppose that it is hardly
to be looked upon as one of those passions that actually
debase the mind.
Whenever love is described as of a serious nature, and
much more when it is to lead to a tragical result, it depends
upon a law of the mind, which, I believe, I shall hereafter
be able to make intelligible, and which would not only
justify Shakspeare, but show an analogy to all his other
characters.
END OF THE SEVENTH LECTURE.
THE EIGHTH LECTURE.
It is impossible to pay a higher compliment to poetry,
than to consider the effects it produces in common with
rehgion, yet distinct (as far as distinction can be, where
there is no division) in those qualities which religion
exercises and diffuses over all mankind, as far as they are
subject to its influence.
I have often thought that religion (speaking of it only
as it accords with poetry, without reference to its more
serious impressions) is the poetry of mankind, both having
for their objects : —
1. To generalise our notions ; to prevent men from
confining their attention solely, or chiefly, to their own
narrow sphere of action, and to their own individual
circumstances. By placing them in certain awful relations
it merges the individual man in the whole species, and
makes it impossible for any one man to think of his future
lot, or indeed of his present condition, without at the same
time comprising in his view his fellow-creatures.
2. That both poetry and religion throw the object of
deepest interest to a distance from us, and thereby not
only aid our imagination, but in a most important manner
subserve the interest of our virtues ; for that man is indeed
a slave, who is a slave to his own senses, and whose mind
and imagination cannot carry him beyond the distance
which his hand can touch, or even his eye can reach.
436 The Eighth Lecture
3. The grandest point of resemblance between them is,
that both have for their object (I hardly know whether
the English language supplies an appropriate word) the
perfecting, and the pointing out to us the indefinite im-
provement of our nature, and fixing our attention upon
that. They bid us, while we are sitting in the dark at our
little fire, look at the mountain-tops, struggling with dark-
ness, and announcing that light which shall be common to
all, in which individual interests shall resolve into one
common good, and every man shall find in his fellow man
more than a brother.
Such being the case, we need not wonder that it has
pleased Providence, that the divine truths of religion
should have been revealed to us in the form of poetry ;
and that at all times poets, not the slaves of any particular
sectarian opinions, should have joined to support all those
delicate sentiments of the heart (often when they were
most opposed to the reigning philosophy of the day) which
may be called the feeding streams of religion.
I have heard it said that an undevout astronomer is mad.
In the strict sense of the word, every being capable of under-
standing must be mad, who remains, as it were, fixed in
the ground on which he treads — who, gifted with the
divine faculties of indefinite hope and fear, born with them,
yet settles his faith upon that, in which neither hope nor
fear has any proper field for display. Much more truly,
however, might it be said that, an undevout poet is mad :
in the strict sense of the word, an undevout poet is an
impossibility. I have heard of verse-makers (poets they
are not, and never can be) who introduced into their works
such questions as these : — Whether the world was made of
atoms ? — Whether there is a universe ? — Whether there is
a governing mind that supports it ? As I have said, verse-
makers are not poets : the poet is one who carries the sim-
plicity of childhood into the powers of manhood ; who,
with a soul unsubdued by habit, unshackled by custom,
contemplates all things with the freshness and the wonder
of a child ; and, connecting with it the inquisitive powers
of riper years, adds, as far as he can find knowledge, admira-
tion ; and, where knowledge no longer permits admiration,
gladly sinks back again into the childlike feeling of devout
wonder.
The poet is not only the man made to solve the riddle
The Eighth Lecture 437
of the universe, but he is also the man who feels where it
is not solved. What is old and worn-out, not in itself, but
from the dimness of the intellectual eye, produced by
worldly passions and pursuits, he makes new : he pours
upon it the dew that glistens, and blows round it the breeze
that cooled us in our infancy. I hope, therefore, that if
in this single lecture I make some demand on the attention
of my hearers to a most important subject, upon which
depends all sense of the worthiness or unworthiness of our
nature, I shall obtain their pardon. If I afford them less
amusement, I trust that their own reflections upon a few
thoughts will be found to repay them.
I have been led to these observations by the tragedy
of " Romeo and Juliet," and by some, perhaps, indiscreet
expressions, certainly not well chosen, concerning falling
in love at first sight. I have taken one of Shakspeare's
earliest works, as I consider it, in order to show that he,
of all his contemporaries (Sir Philip Sidney alone excepted),
entertained a just conception of the female character.
Unquestionably, that gentleman of Europe — that all-
accomplished man, and our beloved Shakspeare, were the
only writers of that age, who pitched their ideas of female
perfection according to the best researches of philosophy :
compared with all who followed them, they stand as mighty
mountains, the islands of a deluge, which has swallowed all
the rest in the flood of oblivion. ^
I certainly do not mean, as a general maxim, to justify so
foolish a thing as what goes by the name of love at first
sight ; but, to express myself more accurately, I should
say that there is, and has always existed, a deep emotion
of the mind, which might be called love momentaneous —
not love at first sight, nor known by the subject of it to be
or to have been such, but after many years of experience. ^
I have to defend the existence of love, as a passion in
1 1 remember, in conversing on this very point at a subsequent period, — I cannot fix
the date, — Coleridge made a willing exception in favour of Spenser ; but he added that
the notions of the author of the ' ' Faery Queen " were often so romantic and heightened
by fancy, thai he could not look upon Spenser's females as creatures of our world ;
whereas the ladies of Shakspeare and Sidney were flesh and blood, with their very
defects and qualifications giving evidence of their humanity : hence the lively interest
taken regarding them. — J. P. C.
2 Coleridge here made a reference to, and cited a passage from, Hooker's "Ecclesi-
astical Polity ; " but my note contains only a hint regarding it ; and the probability is,
that I did not insert more of it, because I thought I should be able, at some future
time, to procure the exact words, or a reference to them, from the Lecturer.
Whether I did so or not I cannot remember, but I fiud no trace of anything of the
kind.— J. P. C.
438 The Eighth Lecture
itself fit and appropriate to human nature ; — I say fit for
human nature, and not only so, but peculiar to it, unshared
either in degree or kind by any of our fellow creatures : it
is a passion which it is impossible for any creature to feel,
but a being endowed with reason, with the moral sense,
and with the strong yearnings, which, like all other power-
ful effects in nature, prophesy some future effect.
If I were to address myself to the materialist, with
reference to the human kind, and (admitting the three
great laws common to all beings, — i, the law of self -pre-
servation ; 2, that of continuing the race ; and 3, the care
of the offspring till protection is no longer needed), — were
to ask him, whether he thought any motives of prudence or
duty enforced the simple necessity of preserving the race ?
or whether, after a course of serious reflection, he came to
the conclusion, that it would be better to have a posterity,
from a sense of duty impelling us to seek that as our object ?
— if, I say, I were to ask a materialist, whether such was the
real cause of the preservation of the species, he would laugh
me to scorn ; he would say that nature was too wise to
trust any of her great designs to the mere cold calculations
of fallible mortality.
Then the question comes to a short crisis : — Is, or is not,
our moral nature a part of the end of Providence ? or are
we, or are we not, beings meant for society ? Is that
society, or is it not, meant to be progressive ? I trust that
none of my auditors would endure the putting of the
question — Whether, independently of the progression of
the race, every individual has it not in his power to be in-
definitely progressive ? — for, without marriage, without
exclusive attachment, there could be no human society ;
herds, as I said, there might be, but society there could not
be : there could be none of that delightful intercourse
between father and child ; none of the sacred affections ;
none of the charities of humanity ; none of all those many
and complex causes, which have raised us to the state we
have already reached, could possibly have existence. All
these effects are not found among the brutes ; neither are
they found among savages, whom strange accidents have
sunk below the class of human beings, insomuch that a stop
seems actually to have been put to their progressiveness.
We may, therefore, safely conclude that there is placed
within us some element, if I may so say, of our nature—-
The Eighth Lecture 439
something which is as pecuHar to our moral nature, as any
other part can be conceived to be, name it what you will, —
name it, I will say for illustration, devotion, — name it
friendship, or a sense of duty ; but something there is,
peculiar to our nature, which answers the moral end ; as
we find everywhere in the ends of the moral world, that
there are proportionate material and bodily means of
accomplishing them.
We are born, and it is our nature and lot to be composed
of body and mind ; but when our heart leaps up on hearing
of the victories of our country, or of the rescue of the
virtuous, but unhappy, from the hands of an oppressor ;
when a parent is transported at the restoration of a beloved
child from deadly sickness ; when the pulse is quickened,
from any of these or other causes, do we therefore say,
because the body interprets the emotions of the mind and
sympathises with them, asserting its claim to participation,
that joy is not mental, or that it is not moral ? Do we
assert, that it was owing merely to fulness of blood that the
heart throbbed, and the pulse played ? Do we not rather
say, that the regent, the mind, being glad, its slave, its
willing slave, the body, responded to it, and obeyed the
impulse ? If we are possessed with a feeling of having
done a wrong, or of having had a wrong done to us, and it
excites the blush of shame or the glow of anger, do we pre-
tend to say that, by some accident, the blood suffused itself
into veins unusually small, and therefore that the guilty
seemed to evince shame, or the injured indignation ? In
these things we scorn such instruction ; and shall it be
deemed a sufficient excuse for the materialist to degrade
that passion, on which not only many of our virtues depend,
but upon which the whole frame, the whole structure of
human society rests ? Shall we pardon him this debase-
ment of love, because our body has been united to mind by
Providence, in order, not to reduce the high to the level of
the low, but to elevate the low to the level of the high ? We
should be guilty of nothing less than an act of moral
suicide, if we consented to degrade that which on every
account is most noble, by merging it in what is most de-
rogatory : as if an angel were to hold out to us the welcom-
ing hand of brotherhood, and we turned away from it, to
wallow, as it were, with the hog in the mire.
One of the most lofty and intellectual of the poets
440 The Eighth Lecture
of the time of Shakspeare has described this degradation
most wonderfully, where he speaks of a man, who, having
been converted by the witchery of worldly pleasure and
passion, into a hog, on being restored to his human shape
still preferred his bestial condition : —
" But one, above the rest in special,
That had a hog been late, hight Grill by name.
Repined greatly, and did him miscall.
" Said Guyon, See the mind of beastly man !
That hath so soon forgot the excellence
Of his creation, when he life began,
That now he chooseth, with vile difference,
To be a beast and lack intelligence.
To whom the Palmer thus : — The dunghill kind
Delights in filth and foul incontinence :
Let Grill be Grill, and have his hoggish mind ;
But let us hence depart, whilst weather serves and wind."
Faiyy Queen, Book ii., c. 12.
The first feeling that would strike a reflecting mind,
wishing to see mankind not only in an amiable but in a
just hght, would be that beautiful feeling in the moral
world, the brotherly and sisterly affections, — the existence
of strong affection greatly modified by the difference of
sex ; made more tender, more graceful, more soothing
and conciliatory by the circumstance of difference, yet
still remaining perfectly pure, perfectly spiritual. How
glorious, we may say, would be the effect, if the instances
were rare ; but how much more glorious, when they are
so frequent as to be only not universal. This species of
affection is the object of religious veneration with all
those who love their fellow men, or who know themselves.
The power of education over the human mind is herein
exemplified, and data for hope are afforded of yet un-
realised excellences, perhaps dormant in our nature.
When we see so divine a moral effect spread through all
classes, what may we not hope of other excellences, of
unknown quahty, still to be developed ?
By dividing the sisterly and fraternal affections from
the conjugal, we have, in truth, two loves, each of them as
strong as any affection can be, or ought to be, consistently
with the performance of our duty, and the love we should
bear to our neighbour. Then, by the former preceding
The Eighth Lecture 441
the latter, the latter is rendered more pure, more even,
and more constant : the wife has already learned the
discipline of pure love in the character of a sister. By
the discipline of private life she has already learned how
to yield, how to influence, how to command. To all
this are to be added the beautiful gradations of attachment
which distinguish human nature ; — from sister to wife,
from wife to child, to uncle, to cousin, to one of our kin,
to one of our blood, to our near neighbour, to our county-
man, and to our countryman.
The bad results of a want of this variety of orders, of
this graceful subordination in the character of attachment,
I have often observed in Italy in particular, as well as in
other countries, where the young are kept secluded, not
only from their neighbours, but from their own families —
all closely imprisoned, until the hour when they are
necessarily let out of their cages, without having had
the opportunity of learning to fly — without experience,
restrained by no kindly feeling, and detesting the control
which so long kept them from enjoying the full hubbub
of licence.
The question is. How have nature and Providence
secured these blessings to us ? In this way : — that in
general the affections become those which urge us to leave
the paternal nest. We arrive at a definite time of Ufe,
and feel passions that invite us to enter into the world ;
and this new feeling assuredly coalesces with a new object.
Suppose we are under the influence of a vivid feeling that
is new to us : that feeling will more firmly combine with
an external object, which is likewise vivid from novelty,
than with one that is familiar.
To this may be added the aversion, which seems to
have acted very strongly in rude ages, concerning anything
common to us and to the animal creation. That which
is done by beasts man feels a natural repugnance to
imitate. The desire to extend the bond of relationship,
in families which had emigrated from the patriarchal seed,
would likewise have its influence.
All these circumstances would render the marriage of
brother and sister unfrequent, and in simple ages an
ominous feeling to the contrary might easily prevail.
Some tradition might aid the objections to such a union ;
and, for aught we know, some law might be preserved
442 The Eighth Lecture
in the Temple of Isis, and from thence obtained by the
patriarchs, which would augment the horror attached to
such connexions. This horror once felt, and soon propa-
gated, the present state of feeling on the subject can
easily be explained.
Children begin as early to talk of marriage as of death,
from attending a wedding, or following a funeral : a new
young visitor is introduced into the family, and from
association they soon think of the conjugal bond. If a
boy tell his parent that he wishes to marry his sister, he
is instantly checked by a stern look, and he is shewn the
impossibility of such a union. The controlling glance of
the parental eye is often more effectual, than any form of
words that could be employed ; and in mature years
a mere look often prevails where exhortation would have
failed. As to infants, they are told, without any reason
assigned, that it could not be so ; and perhaps the best
security for moral rectitude arises from a supposed
necessity. Ignorant persons recoil from the thought
of doing anything that has not been done, and because
they have always been informed that it must not be
done.
The individual has by this time learned the greatest and
best lesson of the human mind — that in ourselves we are
imperfect ; and another truth, of the next, if not of equal,
importance — that there exists a possibility of uniting two
beings, each identified in their nature, but distinguished
in their separate qualities, so that each should retain what
distinguishes them, and at the same time each acquire the
qualities of that being which is contradistinguished. This
is perhaps the most beautiful part of our nature : the man
loses not his manly character : he does not become less
brave or less resolved to go through fire and water, if
necessary, for the object of his affections : rather say,
that he becomes far more brave and resolute. He then
feels the beginnings of his moral nature : he then is
sensible of its imperfection, and of its perfectibility. All
the grand and sublime thoughts of an improved state of
being then dawn upon him : he can acquire the patience
of woman, which in him is fortitude : the beauty and
susceptibility of the female character in him becomes a
desire to display all that is noble and dignified. In short,
the only true resemblance to a couple thus united is the
The Eighth Lecture 443
pure sky blue of heaven : the female unites the beautiful
with the sublime, and the male the sublime with the
beautiful.
Throughout the whole of his plays Shakspeare has
evidently looked at the subject of love in this dignified
light : he has conceived it not only with moral grandeur,
but with philosophical penetration. The mind of man
searches for something which shall add to his perfection
— which shall assist him, ; and he also yearns to lend his
aid in completing the moral nature of another. Thoughts
like these will occupy many of his serious moments :
imagination will accumulate on imagination, until at last
some object attracts his attention, and to this object
the whole weight and impulse of his feelings will be
directed.
Who shall say this is not love ? Here is system, but it
is founded upon nature : here are associations ; here are
strong feelings, natural to us as men, and they are directed
and finally attached to one object : — who shall say this
is not love ? Assuredly not the being who is the subject
of these sensations. — If it be not love, it is only known
that it is not by Him who knows all things. Shakspeare
has therefore described Romeo as in love in the first
instance with Rosaline, and so completely does he fancy
himself in love that he declares, before he has seen Juliet,
" When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires ;
And these, who, often drown'd, could never die.
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
One fairer than my love ? the all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun."
Act I., Scene i.
This is in answer to Benvolio, who has asked Romeo to
compare the supposed beauty of Rosaline with the actual
beauty of other ladies ; and in this full feeling of confidence
Romeo is brought to Capulet's, as it were by accident : he
sees Juliet, instantly becomes the heretic he has just before
declared impossible, and then commences that complete-
ness of attachment which forms the whole subject of the
tragedy.
Surely Shakspeare, the poet, the philosopher, who com-
bined truth with beauty and beauty with truth, never
dreamed that he could interest his auditory in favour
444 The Eighth Lecture
of Romeo, by representing him as a mere weather-cock,
blown round by every woman's breath ; who, having
seen one, became the victim of melancholy, eating his
own heart, concentrating all his hopes and fears in her,
and yet, in an instant, changing, and falling madly in love
with another. Shakspeare must have meant something
more than this, for this was the way to make people
despise, instead of admiring his hero. Romeo tells us
what was Shakspeare's purpose : he shows us that he
had looked at Rosaline with a different feeling from that
with which he had looked at Juliet. Rosaline was the
object to which his over-full heart had attached itself in
the first instance : our imperfect nature, in proportion as
our ideas are vivid, seeks after something in which those
ideas may be realised.
So with the indiscreet friendships sometimes formed by
men of genius : they are conscious of their own weakness,
and are ready to believe others stronger than themselves,
when, in truth, they are weaker : they have formed an
ideal in their own minds, and they want to see it realised ;
they require more than shadowy thought. Their own
sense of imperfection makes it impossible for them to
fasten their attachment upon themselves, and hence the
humility of men of true genius : in, perhaps, the first
man they meet, they only see what is good ; they have
no sense of his deficiencies, and their friendship becomes
.so strong, that they almost fall down and worship one in
every respect greatly their inferior.
What is true of friendship is true of love, with a person
of ardent feelings and warm imagination. What took
place in the mind of Romeo was merely natural ; it is
accordant with every day's experience. Amid such
various events, such shifting scenes, such changing person-
ages, we are often mistaken, and discover that he or she
was not what we hoped and expected ; we find that the
individual first chosen will not complete our imperfection ;
we may have suffered unnecessary pangs, and have indulged
idly-directed hopes, and then a being may arise before
us, who has more resemblance to the ideal we have formed.
We know that we loved the earlier object with ardour
and purity, but it was not what we feel for the later object.
Our own mind tells us, that in the first instance we merely
yearned after an object, but in the last instance we know
The Ninth Lecture 445
that we have found that object, and that it corresponds
with the idea we had previously formed.
[Here my original notes abruptly break off: the brochure in which I had inserted
them was full, and I took another for the conclusion of the Lecture, which is
unfortunately lost.]
THE NINTH LECTURE.
It is a known but unexplained phenomenon, that among
the ancients statuary rose to such a degree of perfection,
as almost to baffle the hope of imitating it, and to render
the chance of excelling it absolutely impossible ; yet
painting, at the same period, notwithstanding the admira-
tion bestowed upon it by Pliny and others, has been proved
to be an art of much later growth, as it was also of far
inferior quality. I remember a man of high rank, equally
admirable for his talents and his taste, pointing to a
common sign-post, and saying that had Titian never lived,
the richness of representation by colour, even there, would
never have been attained. In that mechanical branch of
painting, perspective, it has been shown that the Romans
were very deficient. The excavations and consequent
discoveries, at Herculaneum and elsewhere, prove the
Roman artists to have been guilty of such blunders, as
to give plausibility to the assertions of those who maintain
that the ancients were whoUy ignorant of perspective.
However, that they knew something of it is established by
Vitruvius in the introduction to his second book.
Something of the same kind, as I endeavoured to explain
in a previous lecture, was the cause with the drama of the
ancients, which has been imitated by the French, Italians,
and by various writers in England since the Restoration.
AU that is there represented seems to be, as it were, upon
one fiat surface : the theme,^ if we may so call it in refer-
ence to music, admits of nothing more than the change of a
single note, and excludes that which is the true principle
of life — the attaining of the same result by an infinite
variety of means.
The plays of Shakspeare are in no respect imitations
1 Here occurs another evident mistake of mine, in my original short-hand note, in
consequence of mishearing : I hastily wrote scheme, instead of " theme," which last
must have been the word of the Lecturer.
446 The Ninth Lecture
of the Greeks : they may be called analogies, because by
very different means they arrive at the same end ; whereas
the French and Italian tragedies I have read, and the
English ones on the same model, are mere copies, though
they cannot be called likenesses, seeking the same effect
by adopting the same means, but under most inappro-
priate and adverse circumstances.
I have thus been led to consider, that the ancient drama
(meaning the works of iEschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles,
for the rhetorical productions of the same class by the
Romans are scarcely to be treated as original theatrical
poems) might be contrasted with the Shakspearean drama.
— I call it the Shakspearean drama to distinguish it,
because I know of no other writer who has realised the same
idea, although I am told by some, that the Spanish poets,
Lopez de Vega and Calderon, have been equally successful.
The Shakspearean drama and the Greek drama may be
compared to statuary and painting. In statuary, as in the
Greek drama, the characters must be few, because the very
essence of statuary is a high degree of abstraction, which
prevents a great many figures being combined in the same
effect. In a grand group of Niobe, or in any other ancient
heroic subject, how disgusting even it would appear, if an
old nurse were introduced. Not only the number of figures
must be circumscribed, but nothing undignified must be
placed in company with what is dignified : no one
personage must be brought in that is not an abstraction :
all the actors in the scene must not be presented at once
to the eye ; and the effect of multitude, if required, must
be produced without the intermingling of anything
discordant.
Compare this smaU group with a picture by Raphael or
Titian, in which an immense number of figures may be
introduced, a beggar, a cripple, a dog, or a cat ; and by a
less degree of labour, and a less degree of abstraction, an
effect is produced equally harmonious to the mind, more
true to nature with its varied colours, and, in all respects
but one, superior to statuary. The man of taste feels
satisfied, and to that which the reason conceives possible,
a momentary reahty is given by the aid of imagination.
I need not here repeat what I have said before, regard-
ing the circumstances which permitted Shakspeare to make
an alteration, not merely so suitable to the age in which he
The Ninth Lecture 447
lived, but, in fact, so necessitated by the condition of that
age. I need not again remind you of the difference I
pointed out between imitation and Ukeness, in reference to
the attempt to give reahty to representations on the stage.
The distinction between imitation and Ukeness depends
upon the admixture of circumstances of dissimilarity ;
an imitation is not a copy, precisely as likeness is not same-
ness, in that sense of the word " likeness " which implies
difference conjoined with sameness. Shakspeare reflected
manners in his plays, not by a cold formal copy, but by an
imitation ; that is to say, by an admixture of circum-
stances, not absolutely true in themselves, but true to the
character and to the time represented.
It is fair to own that he had many advantages. The
great of that day, instead of surrounding themselves by
the chevaux de frise of what is now called high breeding,
endeavoured to distinguish themselves by attainments, by
energy of thought, and consequent powers of mind. The
stage, indeed, had nothing but curtains for its scenes, but
this fact compelled the actor, as well as the author, to
appeal to the imaginations, and not to the senses of the
audience : thus was obtained a power over space and time,
which in an ancient theatre would have been absurd,
because it would have been contradictory. The advantage
is vastly in favour of our own early stage : the dramatic
poet there relies upon the imagination, upon the reason,
and upon the noblest powers of the human heart ; he
shakes off the iron bondage of space and time ; he appeals
to that which we most wish to be, when we are most worthy
of being, while the ancient dramatist binds us down to the
meanest part of our nature, and the chief compensation is
a simple acquiescence of the mind in the position, that what
is represented might possibly have occurred in the time and
place required by the unities. It is a poor compliment to
a poet to tell him, that he has only the qualifications of a
historian.
In dramatic composition the observation of the unities
of time and place so narrows the period of action, so
impoverishes the sources of pleasure, that of all the
Athenian dramas there is scarcely one in which the ab-
surdity is not glaring, of aiming at an object, and utterly
failing in the attainment of it ; events are sometimes
brought into a space in which it is impossible for them to
448 The Ninth Lecture
have occurred, and in this way the grandest effort of the
dramatist, that of making his play the mirror of hfe, is
entirely defeated.
The limit allowed by the rules of the Greek stage was
twenty-four hours ; but, inasmuch as, even in this case,
time must have become a subject of imagination, it was
just as reasonable to allow twenty-four months, or even
years. The mind is acted upon by such strong stimulants,
that the period is indifferent ; and when once the boundary
of possibility is passed, no restriction can be assigned. In
reading Shakspeare, we should first consider in which of
his plays he means to appeal to the reason, and in which
to the imagination, faculties which have no relation to
time and place, excepting as in the one case they imply a
succession of cause and effect, and in the other form a
harmonious picture, so that the impulse given by the
reason is carried on by the imagination.
We have often heard Shakspeare spoken of as a child of
nature, and some of his modern imitators, without the
genius to copy nature, by resorting to real incidents, and
treating them in a certain way, have produced that stage-
phenomenon which is neither tragic nor comic, nor tragi-
comic, nor comi-tragic, but sentimental. This sort of
writing depends upon some very affecting circumstances,
and in its greatest excellence aspires no higher than the
genius of an onion, — the power of drawing tears ; while the
author, acting the part of a ventriloquist, distributes his
own insipidity among the characters, if characters they can
be called, which have no marked and distinguishing
features. I have seen dramas of this sort, some translated
and some the growth of our own soil, so well acted, and so
ill written, that if I could have been made for the time
artificially deaf, I should have been pleased with that
performance as a pantomime, which was intolerable as a
play.
Shakspeare's characters, from Othello and Macbeth
down to Dogberry and the Grave-digger, may be termed
ideal realities. They are not the things themselves, so
much as abstracts of the things, which a great mind takes
into itself, and there naturalises them to its own conception.
Take Dogberry : are no important truths there conveyed,
no admirable lessons taught, and no valuable allusions
made to reigning follies, which the poet saw must for ever
The Ninth Lecture 449
reign ? He is not the creature of the day, to disappear
with the day, but the representative and abstract of truth
which must ever be true, and of humour which must ever
be humorous.
The readers of Shakspeare may be divided into two
clcLsses : —
1. Those who read his works with feehng and under-
standing ;
2. Those who, without affecting to criticise, merely
feel, and may be said to be the recipients of the poet's
power.
Between the two no medium can be endured. The
ordinary reader, who does not pretend to bring his under-
standing to bear upon the subject, often feels that some
real trait of his own has been caught, that some nerve has
been touched ; and he knows that it has been touched by
the vibration he experiences — a thrill, which tells us that,
by becoming better acquainted with the poet, we have
become better acquainted with ourselves.
In the plays of Shakspeare every man sees himself, with-
out knowing that he does so : as in some of the phenomena
of nature, in the mist of the mountain, the traveller beholds
his own figure, but the glory round the head distinguishes
it from a mere vulgar copy. In traversing the Brocken, in
the north of Germany, at sunrise, the brilliant beams are
shot askance, and you see before you a being of gigantic
proportions, and of such elevated dignity, that you only
know it to be yourself by similarity of action. In the same
way, near Messina, natural forms, at determined distances,
are represented on an invisible mist, not as they really exist,
but dressed in all the prismatic colours of the imagination.
So in Shakspeare : every form is true, everything has
reality for its foundation ; we can aU recognise the truth,
but we see it decorated with such hues of beauty, and
magnified to such proportions of grandeur, that, while we
know the figure, we know also how much it has been refined
and exalted by the poet.
It is humiliating to reflect that, as it were, because
heaven has given us the greatest poet, it has inflicted upon
that poet the most incompetent critics : none of them
seem to understand even his language, much less the prin-
ciples upon which he wrote, and the peculiarities which
distinguish him from all rivals. I will not now dwell upon
450 The Ninth Lecture
this point, because it is my intention to devote a lecture
more immediately to the prefaces of Pope and Johnson.
Some of Shakspeare's contemporaries appear to have under-
stood him, and imitated him in a way that does the
original no small honour ; but modern preface-writers and
commentators, while they praise him as a great genius,
when they come to publish notes upon his plays, treat him
like a schoolboy ; as if this great genius did not understand
himself, was not aware of his own powers, and wrote with-
out design or purpose. Nearly all they can do is to express
the most vulgar of all feelings, wonderment — wondering at
what they term the irregularity of his genius, sometimes
above all praise, and at other times, if they are to be trusted,
below all contempt. They endeavour to reconcile the two
opinions by asserting that he wrote for the mob ; as if a
man of real genius ever wrote for the mob. Shakspeare
never consciously wrote what was below himself : careless
he might be, and his better genius may not always have
attended him ; but I fearlessly say, that he never penned
a line that he knew would degrade him. No man does
anything equally well at all times ; but because Shakspeare
could not always be the greatest of poets, was he therefore
to condescend to make himself the least ? ^
Yesterday afternoon a friend left a book for me by a
German critic, of which I have only had time to read a
small part ; but what I did read I approved, and I should
be disposed to applaud the work much more highly, were
it not that in so doing I should, in a manner, applaud my-
self. The sentiments and opinions are coincident with
those to which I gave utterance in my lectures at the
Royal Institution. It is not a little wonderful, that so
many ages have elapsed since the time of Shakspeare, and
that it should remain for foreigners first to feel truly, and
to appreciate justly, his mighty genius. The solution of
this circumstance must be sought in the history of our
nation : the English have become a busy commercial
people, and they have unquestionably derived from this
propensity many social and physical advantages : they
have grown to be a mighty empire — one of the great
^ It is certain that my shorthand note in this place affords another instance of mis-
hearing: it runs literally thus — "but because Shakspeare could not always be the
greatest of poets, was. he therefore to condescend to make himself a beast ? " For " a
beast," we must read the leasts the antithesis being between " greatest " and " least,"
and not between " poet " and " beast." Yet " beast " may be reconciled with sense
as in Macbeth : " Notes and Emend." 420.
The Ninth Lecture 451
nations of the world, whose moral superiority enables it to
struggle successfully against him, who may be deemed the
evil genius of our planet.
On the other hand, the Germans, unable to distinguish
themselves in action, have been driven to speculation :
all their feelings have been forced back into the thinking
and reasoning mind. To do, with them is impossible, but
in determining what ought to be done, they perhaps exceed
every people of the globe. Incapable of acting outwardly,
they have acted internally : they first rationally recalled
the ancient philosophy, and set their spirits to work with
an energy of which England produces no parallel, since
those truly heroic times, heroic in body and soul, the days
of Elizabeth.
If all that has been written upon Shakspeare by English-
men were burned, in the want of candles, merely to enable
us to read one half of what our dramatist produced, we
should be great gainers. Providence has given England
the greatest man that ever put on and put off mortality,
and has thrown a sop to the envy of other nations, by in-
flicting upon his native country the most incompetent
critics. I say nothing here of the state in which his text
has come down to us, farther than that it is evidently very
imperfect : in many places his sense has been perverted, in
others, if not entirely obscured, so blunderingly repre-
sented, as to afford us only a glimpse of what he meant,
without the power of restoring his own expressions. But
whether his dramas have been perfectly or imperfectly
printed, it is quite clear that modern inquiry and specu-
lative ingenuity in this kingdom have done nothing ; or I
might say, without a solecism, less than nothing (for some
editors have multiplied corruptions) to retrieve the genuine
language of the poet. His critics among us, during the
whole of the last century, have neither understood nor
appreciated him ; for how could they appreciate what they
could not understand ?
His contemporaries, and those who immediately fol-
lowed him, were not so insensible of his merits, or so incap-
able of explaining them ; and one of them, who might be
Milton when a young man of four and twenty, printed, in
the second folio of Shakspeare's works, a laudatory poem,
which, in its kind, has no equal for justness and distinct-
ness of description, in reference to the powers and qualities
452 The Ninth Lecture
of lofty genius. It runs thus, and I hope that, when I have
finished, I shall stand in need of no excuse for reading the
whole of it.
** A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear
And equal surface can make things appear,
Distant a thousand years, and represent
Them in their lively colours, just extent
To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates.
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates
Of death and Lethe, where confused lie
Great heaps of ruinous mortality :
In that deep dusky dungeon to discern
A royal ghost from churls ; by art to learn
The physiognomy of shades, and give
Them sudden birth, wondering how oft they live ;
What story coldly tells, what poets feign
At second hand, and picture without brain,
Senseless and soul-less shows : to give a stage
(Ample and true with life) voice, action, age,
As Plato's year, and new scene of the world,
Them unto us, or us to them had hurl'd :
To raise our ancient sovereigns from their herse.
Make kings his subjects ; by exchanging verse,
Enlive their pale trunks ; that the present age
Joys at their joy, and trembles at their rage :
Yet so to temper passion, that our ears
Take pleasure in their pain, and eyes in tears
Both weep and smile ; fearful at plot so sad.
Then laughing at our fear ; abus'd, and glad
To be abus'd ; afifected with that truth
Which we perceive is false, pleas'd in that ruth
At which we start, and, by elaborate play,
Tortur'd and tickl'd ; by a crab-like way
Time past made pastime, and in ugly sort
Disgorging up his ravin for our sport : —
— While the plebeian imp, from lofty throne.
Creates and rules a world, and works upon
Mankind by secret engines ; now to move
A chilling pity, then a rigorous love ;
To strike up and stroke down, both joy and ire
To steer th' affections ; and by heavenly fire
Mold us anew, stol'n from ourselves : —
This, and much more, which cannot be express'd
But by himself, his tongue, and his own breast.
Was Shakspeare's freehold ; which his cunning brain
Improv'd by favour of the nine-fold train ;
The buskin'd muse, the comick queen, the grand
And louder tone of Clio, nimble hand
And nimbler foot of the melodious pair.
The silver-voiced lady, the most fair
Calliope, whose speaking silence daunts.
And she whose praise the heavenly body chants ;
The Ninth Lecture 453
These jointly woo'd him, envying one another ;
(Obey'd by all as spouse, but lov'd as brother)
And wrought a curious robe, of sable grave,
Fresh green, and pleasant yellow, red most brave,
And constant blue, rich purple, guiltless white,
The lowly russet, and the scarlet bright ;
Branch'd and embroider'd like the painted spring ;
Each leaf match'd with a flower, and each string
Of golden wire, each line of silk : there run
Italian works, whose thread the sisters spun ;
And these did sing, or seem to sing, the choice
Birds of a foreign note and various voice :
Here hangs a mossy rock ; there plays a fair
But chiding fountain, purled : not the air,
Nor clouds, nor thunder, but were living drawn ;
Not out of common tiffany or lawn.
But fine materials, which the Muses know.
And only know the countries where they grow.
Now, when they could no longer him enjoy.
In mortal garments pent, — death may destroy,
They say, his body ; but his verse shall live.
And more than nature takes our hands shall give :
In a less volume, but more strongly bound,
Shakspeare shall breathe and speak ; with laurel crown'd,
Which never fades ; fed with ambrosian meat,
In a well-lined vesture, rich, and neat.
So with this robe they clothe him, bid him wear it ;
For time shall never stain, nor envy tear it."
This poem is subscribed J. M. S., meaning, as some have
explained the initials, " John Milton, Student ": the
internal evidence seems to me decisive, for there was, I
think, no other man, of that particular day, capable of
writing anything so characteristic of Shakspeare, so justly
thought, and so happily expressed.
It is a mistake to say that any of Shakspeare's char-
acters strike us as portraits : they have the union of
reason perceiving, of judgment recording, and of imagina-
tion diffusing over all a magic glory. While the poet
registers what is past, he projects the future in a wonder-
ful degree, and makes us feel, however slightly, and see,
however dimly, that state of being in which there is
neither past nor future, but all is permanent in the very
energy of nature.
Although I have affirmed that all Shakspeare's char-
acters are ideal, and the result of his own meditation,
yet a just separation may be made of those in which the
ideal is most prominent — where it is put forward more
intensely — where we are made more conscious of the
454 The Ninth Lecture
ideal, though in truth they possess no more nor less
ideality : and of those which, though equally ideaUsed,
the delusion upon the mind is of their being real. The
characters in the various plays may be separated into
those where the real is disguised in the ideal, and those
where the ideal is concealed from us by the real. The
difference is made by the different powers of mind em-
ployed by the poet in the representation.
At present I shall only speak of dramas where the
ideal is predominant ; and chiefly for this reason — that
those plays have been attacked with the greatest violence.
The objections to them are not the growth of our own
country, but of France, — the judgment of monkeys, by
some wonderful phenomenon, put into the mouths of
people shaped like men. These creatures have informed
us that Shakspeare is a miraculous monster, in whom many
heterogeneous components were thrown together, pro-
ducing a discordant mass of genius — an irregular and ill-
assorted structure of gigantic proportions.
Among the ideal plays, I will take " The Tempest,"
by way of example. Various others might be mentioned,
but it is impossible to go through every drama, and what
I remark on " The Tempest " will apply to all Shakspeare's
productions of the same class.
In this play Shakspeare has especially appealed to the
imagination, and he has constructed a plot well adapted to
the purpose. According to his scheme, he did not appeal
to any sensuous impression (the word " sensuous " is
authorised by Milton) of time and place, but to the im-
agination, and it is to be borne in mind, that of old, and
as regards mere scenery, his works may be said to have
been recited rather than acted — that is to say, description
and narration supplied the place of visual exhibition :
the audience was told to fancy that they saw what they
only heard described ; the painting was not in colours, but
in words.
This is particularly to be noted in the first scene — a
storm and its confusion on board the king's ship. The
highest and the lowest characters are brought together,
and with what excellence ! Much of the genius of Shak-
speare is displayed in these happy combinations — the
highest and the lowest, the gayest and the saddest ; he is
not droll in one scene and melancholy in another, but often
The Ninth Lecture 455
both the one and the other in the same scene. Laughter
is made to swell the tear of sorrow, and to throw, as it were,
a poetic light upon it, while the tear mingles tenderness
with the laughter. Shakspeare has evinced the power,
which above all other men he possessed, that of intro-
ducing the profoundest sentiments of wisdom, where they
would be least expected, yet where they are most truly
natural. One admirable secret of his art is, that separate
speeches frequently do not appear to have been occasioned
by those which preceded, and which are consequent upon
each other, but to have arisen out of the peculiar character
of the speaker.
Before I go further, I may take the opportunity of
explaining what is meant by mechanic and organic regul-
arity. In the former the copy must appear as if it had
come out of the same mould with the original ; in the
latter there is a law which all the parts obey, conform-
ing themselves to the outward symbols and manifestations
of the essential principle. If we look to the growth of
trees, for instance, we shall observe that trees of the same
kind vary considerably, according to the circumstances
of soil, air, or position ; yet we are able to decide at once
whether they are oaks, elms, or poplars.
So with Shakspeare's characters : he shows us the life
and principle of each being with organic regularity. The
Boatswain, in the first scene of " The Tempest," when the
bonds of reverence are thrown off as a sense of danger
impresses all, gives a loose to his feelings, and thus pours
forth his vulgar mind to the old Counsellor : —
" Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of
King ? To cabin : silence ! trouble us not."
Gonzalo replies — " Good ; yet remember whom thou
hast aboard." To which the Boatswain answers — " None
that I more love than myself. You are a counsellor : if
you can command these elements to silence, and work the
peace of the present, we will not hand a rope more ; use
your authority : if you cannot, give thanks that you have
lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for
the mischance of the hour, if it so hap. — Cheerly, good
hearts ! — Out of our way, I say."
An ordinary dramatist would, after this speech, have
represented Gonzalo as moralising, or saying something
connected with the Boatswain's language ; for ordinary
456 The Ninth Lecture
dramatists are not men of genius : they combine their
ideas by association, or by logical affinity ; but the vital
writer, who makes men on the stage what they are in
nature, in a moment transports himself into the very
being of each personage, and, instead of cutting out
artificial puppets, he brings before us the men themselves.
Therefore, Gonzalo soliloquises, — " I have great comfort
from this fellow : methinks, he hath no drowning mark
upon him ; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand
fast, good fate, to his hanging ! make the rope of his
destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage. II
he be not born to be hanged, our case is miserable."
In this part of the scene we see the true sailor with
his contempt of danger, and the old counsellor with his
high feeling, who, instead of condescending to notice the
words just addressed to him, turns off, meditating with
himself, and drawing some comfort to his own mind, by
trifling with the ill expression of the boatswain's face,
founding upon it a hope of safety.
Shakspeare had pre-determined to make the plot of
this play such as to involve a certain number of low char-
acters, and at the beginning he pitched the note of the
whole. The first scene was meant as a lively commence-
ment of the story ; the reader is prepared for something
that is to be developed, and in the next scene he brings
forward Prospero and Miranda. How is this done ? By
giving to his favourite character, Miranda, a sentence
which at once expresses the violence and fury of the
storm, such as it might appear to a witness on the land,
and at the same time displays the tenderness of her
feelings — the exquisite feelings of a female brought up in
a desert, but with all the advantages of education, all that
could be communicated by a wise and affectionate father.
She possesses all the delicacy of innocence, yet with all
the powers of her mind unweakened by the combats of
life. Miranda exclaims : —
" O 1 I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer : a brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her,
Dash'd all to pieces."
The doubt here intimated could have occurred to no
mind but to that of Miranda, who had been bred up in the
The Ninth Lecture 457
island with her father and a monster only : she did not
know, as others do, what sort of creatures were in a ship ;
others never would have introduced it as a conjecture.
This shows, that while Shakspeare is displaying his vast
excellence, he never fails to insert some touch or other,
which is not merely characteristic of the particular person,
but combines two things — the person, and the circum-
stances acting upon the person. She proceeds : —
" O ! the cry did knock
Against my very heart. Poor souls ! they perish' d.
Had 1 been any god of power, I would
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er
It should the good ship so have swallow' d, and
The fraughting souls within her."
She still dwells upon that which was most wanting to the
completeness of her nature — these fellow creatures from
whom she appeared banished, with only one relict to keep
them alive, not in her memory, but in her imagination.
Another proof of excellent judgment in the poet, for I
am now principally adverting to that point, is to be found
in the preparation of the reader for what is to follow.
Prospero is introduced, first in his magic robe, which, with
the assistance of his daughter, he lays aside, and we then
know him to be a being possessed of supernatural powers.
He then instructs Miranda in the story of their arrival in the
island, and this is conducted in such a manner, that the
reader never conjectures the technical use the poet has
made of the relation, by informing the auditor of what it is
necessary for him to know.
The next step is the warning by Prospero, that he means,
for particular purposes, to lull his daughter to sleep ; and
here he exhibits the earliest and mildest proof of magical
power. In ordinary and vulgar plays we should have had
some person brought upon the stage, whom nobody knows
or cares anything about, to let the audience into the secret.
Prospero having cast a sleep upon his daughter, by that
sleep stops the narrative at the very moment when it was
necessary to break it off, in order to excite curiosity, and yet
to give the memory and understanding sufficient to carry
on the progress of the history uninterruptedly.
Here I cannot help noticing a fine touch of Shakspeare's
knowledge of human nature, and generally of the great
458 The Ninth Lecture
laws of the human mind : I mean Miranda's infant re-
membrance. Prospero asks her —
" Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell ?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not
Out three years old.
Miranda answers,
" Certainly, sir, I can."
Prospero inquires,
" By what ? by any other house or person ?
Of any thing the image tell me, that
Hath kept with thy remembrance."
To which Miranda returns,
" 'Tis far off ;
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once, that tended me ? "
Act I., Scene 2.
This is exquisite ! In general, our remembrances of
early life arise from vivid colours, especially if we have seen
them in motion : for instance, persons when grown up will
remember a bright green door, seen when they were quite
young ; but Miranda, who was somewhat older, recollected
four or five women who tended her. She might know men
from her father, and her remembrance of the past might
be worn out by the present object, but women she only
knew by herself, by the contemplation of her own figure in
the fountain, and she recalled to her mind what had been.
It was not, that she had seen such and such grandees, or
such and such peeresses, but she remembered to have seen
something Uke the reflection of herself : it was not herself,
and it brought back to her mind what she had seen most
like herself.
In my opinion the picturesque power displayed by Shak-
speare, of all the poets that ever lived, is only equalled, if
equalled, by Milton and Dante. The presence of genius is
not shown in elaborating a picture : we have had many
specimens of this sort of work in modern poems, where all
is so dutchified, if I may use the word, by the most minute
touches, that the reader naturally asks why words, and not
painting, are used ? I know a young lady of much taste,
who observed, that in reading recent versified accounts of
The Ninth Lecture 459
voyages and travels, she, by a sort of instinct, cast her eyes
on the opposite page, for coloured prints of what was so
patiently and punctually described.
The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to
instil that energy into the mind, which compels the imagina-
tion to produce the picture. Prospero tells Miranda,
" One midnight,
Fated to the purpose,^ did Antonio open
The gates of Milan ; and i' the dead of darkness.
The ministers for the purpose hurried thence
Me, and thy crying self."
Here, by introducing a single happy epithet, " crying,"
in the last line, a complete picture is presented to the mind,
and in the production of such pictures the power of genius
consists.
In reference to preparation, it will be observed that the
storm, and all that precedes the tale, as well as the tale
itself, serve to develope completely the main character of
the drama, as well as the design of Prospero. The manner
in which the heroine is charmed asleep fits us for what
follows^ goes beyond our ordinary belief, and gradually
leads us to the appearance and disclosure of a being of the
most fanciful and delicate texture, like Prospero, preter-
naturally gifted.
In this way the entrance of Ariel, if not absolutely fore-
thought by the reader, was foreshewn by the writer : in
addition, we may remark, that the moral feeling called
forth by the sweet words of Miranda,
" Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you ! "
in which she considered only the sufferings and sorrows of
her father, puts the reader in a frame of mind to exert his
imagination in favour of an object so innocent and interest-
ing. The poet makes him wish that, if supernatural agency
were to be employed, it should be used for a being so young
and lovely. " The wish is father to the thought," and
1 Coleridge, of course, could only use the text of the day when he lectured ; but,
since that period, many plausible, and some indisputable, changes have been into-
duced into it: one of them occurs in reference to the word "purpose," for wlii^h
practice has been proposed as the true reading : the change is not absolutely necessary,
but still we can entertain little doubt that " purpose " is a corruption, arising perhaps
out of the similarity of the appearance of the words "purpose" a.nd. practice in
hastily-written manuscript. The word " purpose " recurs in the very uext line but
one.— J. P. C.
460 The Ninth Lecture
Ariel is introduced. Here, what is called poetic faith is
required and created, and our common notions of philo-
sophy give way before it : this feeling may be said to be
much stronger than historic faith, since for the exercise of
poetic faith the mind is previously prepared. I make this
remark, though somewhat digressive, in order to lead to a
future subject of these lectures — the poems of Milton.
When adverting to those, I shall have to explain farther the
distinction between the two.
Many Scriptural poems have been written with so much
of Scripture in them, that what is not Scripture appears to
be not true, and like mingling lies with the most sacred
revelations. Now Milton, on the other hand, has taken for
his subject that one point of Scripture of which we have
the mere fact recorded, and upon this he has most judici-
ously constructed his whole fable. So of Shakspeare's
" King Lear " : we have little historic evidence to guide
or confine us, and the few facts handed down to us, and
admirably employed by the poet, are sufficient, while we
read, to put an end to all doubt as to the credibility of the
story. It is idle to say that this or that incident is im-
probable, because history, as far as it goes, tells us that the
fact was so and so. Four or five lines in the Bible include
the whole that is said of Milton's story, and the Poet has
called up that poetic faith, that conviction of the mind,
which is necessary to make that seem true, which otherwise
might have been deemed almost fabulous.
But to return to " The Tempest," and to the wondrous
creation of Ariel. If a doubt could ever be entertained
whether Shakspeare was a great poet, acting upon laws
arising out of his own nature, and not without law, as has
sometimes been idly asserted, that doubt must be removed
by the character of Ariel. The very first words uttered
by this being introduce the spirit, not as an angel, above
man ; not a gnome, or a fiend, below man ; but while the
poet gives him the faculties and the advantages of reason,
he divests him of aU moral character, not positively, it is
true, but negatively. In air he lives, from air he derives
his being, in air he acts ; and aU his colours and properties
seem to have been obtained from the rainbow and the
skies. There is nothing about Ariel that cannot be con-
ceived to exist either at sun-rise or at sun-set : hence
aU that belongs to Ariel belongs to the delight the mind
The Ninth Lecture 461
is capable of receiving from the most lovely external
appearances. His answers to Prospero are directly to the
question, and nothing beyond ; or where he expatiates,
which is not unfrequently, it is to himself and upon his
own delights, or upon the unnatural situation in which he
is placed, though under a kindly power and to good ends.
Shakspeare has properly made Ariel's very first speech
characteristic of him. After he has described the manner
in which he had raised the storm and produced its harm-
less consequences, we find that Ariel is discontented —
that he has been freed, it is true, from a cruel confinement,
but still that he is bound to obey Prospero, and to execute
any commands imposed upon him. We feel that such a
state of bondage is almost unnatural to him, yet we see
that it is delightful for him to be so employed. — It is as
if we were to command one of the winds in a different
direction to that which nature dictates, or one of the
waves, now rising and now sinking, to recede before it
bursts upon the shore : such is the feeling we experience,
when we learn that a being like Ariel is commanded
to fulfil any mortal behest.
When, however, Shakspeare contrasts the treatment
of Ariel by Prospero with that of Sycorax, we are sensible
that the liberated spirit ought to be grateful, and Ariel
does feel and acknowledge the obligation ; he immediately
assumes the airy being, with a mind so elastically cor-
respondent, that when once a feeling has passed from it,
not a trace is left behind.
Is there anything in nature from which Shakspeare
caught the idea of this delicate and delightful being, with
such child-like simplicity, yet with such preternatural
powers ? He is neither born of heaven, nor of earth ; but,
as it were, between both, live a May-blossom kept sus-
pended in air by the fanning breeze, which prevents it
from falling to the ground, and only finally, and by com-
pulsion, touching earth. This reluctance of the Sylph to
be under the command even of Prospero is kept up through
the whole play, and in the exercise of his admirable judg-
ment Shakspeare has availed himself of it, in order to give
Ariel an interest in the event, looking forward to that
moment when he was to gain his last and only reward —
simple and eternal liberty.
Another instance of admirable judgment and excellent
462
The Ninth Lecture
preparation is to be found in the creature contrasted with
Ariel — Caliban ; who is described in such a manner by
Prospero, as to lead us to expect the appearance of a
foul, unnatural monster. He is not seen at once : his
voice is heard ; this is the preparation ; he was too offen-
sive to be seen first in all his deformity, and in nature
we do not receive so much disgust from sound as from
sight. After we have heard Caliban's voice he does not
enter, until Ariel has entered like a water-nymph. All
the strength of contrast is thus acquired without any of
the shock of abruptness, or of that unpleasant sensation,
which we experience when the object presented is in any
way hateful to our vision.
The character of Caliban is wonderfully conceived :
he is a sort of creature of the earth, as Ariel is a sort
of creature of the air. He partakes of the qualities of
the brute, but is distinguished from brutes in two ways :
— by having mere understanding without moral reason ;
and by not possessing the instincts which pertain to
absolute animals. Still, Caliban is in some respects a
noble being : the poet has raised him far above contempt :
he is a man in the sense of the imagination : all the images
he uses are drawn from nature, and are highly poetical ;
they fit in with the images of Ariel. Caliban gives us
images from the earth, Ariel images from the air. Caliban
talks of the difficulty of finding fresh water, of the situation
of morasses, and of other circumstances which even brute
instinct, without reason, could comprehend. No mean
figure is employed, no mean passion displayed, beyond
animal passion, and repugnance to command.
The manner in which the lovers are introduced is
equally wonderful, and it is the last point I shall now
mention in reference to this, almost miraculous, drama.
The same judgment is observable in every scene, still
preparing, still inviting, and still gratifying, like a finished
piece of music. I have omitted to notice one thing, and
you must give me leave to advert to it before I proceed :
I mean the conspiracy against the life of Alonzo. I want
to shew you how well the poet prepares the feelings of
the reader for this plot, which was to execute the most
detestable of all crimes, and which, in another play,
Shakspeare has called " the murder of sleep."
Antonio and Sebastian at first had no such intention :
The Ninth Lecture 463
it was suggested by the magical sleep cast on Alonzo
and Gonzalo ; but they are previously introduced scoffing
and scorning at what was said by others, without regard
to age or situation — without any sense of admiration for
the excellent truths they heard delivered, but giving
themselves up entirely to the malignant and unsocial
feeling, which induced them to listen to everything that
was said, not for the sake of profiting by the learning
and experience of others, but of hearing something that
might gratify vanity and self-love, by making them believe
that the person speaking was inferior to themselves.
This, let me remark, is one of the grand characteristics
of a villain ; and it would not be so much a presentiment,
as an anticipation of hell, for men to suppose that all
mankind were as wicked as themselves, or might be so,
if they were not too great fools. Pope, you are perhaps
aware, objected to this conspiracy ; but in my mind, if
it could be omitted, the play would lose a charm which
nothing could supply.
Many, indeed innumerable, beautiful passages might
be quoted from this play, independently of the astonishing
scheme of its construction. Every body will call to mind
the grandeur of the language of Prospero in that divine
speech, where he takes leave of his magic art ; and were
I to indulge myself by repetitions of the kind, I should
descend from the character of a lecturer to that of a mere
reciter. Before I terminate, I may particularly recall one
short passage, which has fallen under the very severe, but
inconsiderate, censure of Pope and Arbuthnot, who pro-
nounce it a piece of the grossest bombast. Prospero
thus addresses his daughter, directing her attention to
Ferdinand :
" The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond."
Act I., Scene 2.
Taking these words as a periphrase of — " Look what is
coming yonder," it certainly may to some appear to border
on the ridiculous, and to fall under the rule I formerly laid
down, — that whatever, without injury, can be translated
into a foreign language in simple terms, ought to be in
simple terms in the original language ; but it is to be borne
in mind, that different modes of expression frequently arise
464 The Ninth Lecture
from difference of situation and education : a blackguard
would use very different words, to express the same thing,
to those a gentleman would employ, yet both would be
natural and proper ; difference of feeling gives rise to
difference of language : a gentleman speaks in polished
terms, with due regard to his own rank and position, while
a blackguard, a person little better than half a brute,
speaks like half a brute, showing no respect for himself, nor
for others.
But I am content to try the lines I have just quoted by
the introduction to them ; and then, I think, you will
admit, that nothing could be more fit and appropriate than
such language. How does Prospero introduce them ? He
has just told Miranda a wonderful story, which deeply
affected her, and filled her with surprise and astonishment,
and for his own purposes he afterwards lulls her to sleep.
When she awakes, Shakspeare has made her wholly in-
attentive to the present, but wrapped up in the past. An
actress, who understands the character of Miranda, would
have her eyes cast down, and her eyelids almost covering
them, while she was, as it were, living in her dream. At
this moment Prospero sees Ferdinand, and wishes to point
him out to his daughter, not only with great, but with
scenic solemnity, he standing before her, and before the
spectator, in the dignified character of a great magician.
Something was to appear to Miranda on the sudden, and as
unexpectedly as if the hero of a drama were to be on the
stage at the instant when the curtain is elevated. It is
under such circumstances that Prospero says, in a tone
calculated at once to arouse his daughter's attention,
" The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond."
Turning from the sight of Ferdinand to his thoughtful
daughter, his attention was first struck by the downcast
appearance of her eyes and eyelids ; and, in my humble
opinion, the solemnity of the phraseology assigned to
Prospero is completely in character, recollecting his
preternatural capacity, in which the most familiar objects
in nature present themselves in a mysterious point of view.
It is much easier to find fault with a writer by reference to
former notions and experience, than to sit down and read
him, recollecting his purpose, connecting one feeling with
The Twelfth Lecture 465
another, and judging of his words and phrases, in pro-
portion as they convey the sentiments of the persons
represented.
Of Miranda we may say, that she possesses in herself all
the ideal beauties that could be imagined by the greatest
poet of any age or country ; but it is not my purpose now,
so much to point out the high poetic powers of Shakspeare,
as to illustrate his exquisite judgment, and it is solely with
this design that I have noticed a passage with which, it
seems to me, some critics, and those among the best, have
been unreasonably dissatisfied. If Shakspeare be the
wonder of the ignorant, he is, and ought to be, much more
the wonder of the learned : not only from profundity of
thought, but from his astonishing and intuitive knowledge
of what man must be at all times, and under all circum-
stances, he is rather to be looked upon as a prophet than as
a poet. Yet, with all these unbounded powers, with all
this might and majesty of genius, he makes us feel as if
he were unconscious of himself, and of his high destiny,
disguising the half god in the simplicity of a child.
END OF THE NINTH LECTURE.
THE TWELFTH LECTURE.
In the last lecture I endeavoured to point out in Shak-
speare those characters in which pride of intellect, without
moral feeling, is supposed to be the ruling impulse, such as
lago, Richard III., and even Falstaff. In Richard III.,
ambition is, as it were, the channel in which this impulse
directs itself ; the character is drawn with the greatest
fulness and perfection ; and the poet has not only given us
that character, grown up and completed, but he has shown
us its very source and generation. The inferiority of his
person made the hero seek consolation and compensation
in the superiority of his intellect ; he thus endeavoured to
counterbalance his deficiency. This striking feature is
pourtrayed most admirably by Shakspeare, who represents
Richard bringing forward his very defects and deformities
as matters of boast. It was the same pride of intellect, or
the assumption of it, that made John Wilkes vaunt that,
although he was so ugly, he only wanted, with any lady,
466
The Twelfth Lecture
ten minutes' start of the handsomest man in England.
This certainly was a high compliment to himself ; but a
higher to the female sex, on the supposition that Wilkes
possessed this superiority of intellect, and relied upon it
for making a favourable impression, because ladies would
know how to estimate his advantages.
I will now proceed to offer some remarks upon the
tragedy of " Richard II.," on account of its not very
apparent, but still intimate, connection with " Richard
III." As, in the last, Shakspeare has painted a man where
ambition is the channel in which the ruling impulse runs,
so, in the first, he has given us a character, under the name
of Bolingbroke, or Henry IV., where ambition itself, con-
joined unquestionably with great talents, is the ruling
impulse. In Richard III. the pride of intellect makes use
of ambition as its means ; in Bolingbroke the gratification
of ambition is the end, and talents are the means.
One main object of these lectures is to point out the
superiority of Shakspeare to other dramatists, and no
superiority can be more striking, than that this wonderful
poet could take two characters, which at first sight seem
so much ahke, and yet, when carefuUy and minutely
examined, are so totally distinct.
The popularity of " Richard II." is owing, in a great
measure, to the masterly delineation of the principal
character ; but were there no other ground for admiring
it, it would deserve the highest applause, from the fact
that it contains the most magnificent, and, at the same
time, the truest eulogium of our native countrj^ that the
English language can boast, or which can be produced from
any other tongue, not excepting the proud claims of Greece
and Rome. When I feel, that upon the morality of
Britain depends the safety of Britain, and that her morality
is supported and illustrated by our national feeling, I
cannot read these grand lines without joy and triumph.
Let it be remembered, that while this country is proudly
pre-eminent in morals, her enemy has only maintained his
station by superiority in mechanical appliances. Many of
those who hear me will, no doubt, anticipate the passage
I refer to, and it runs as follows : —
" This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise ;
' The Twelfth Lecture 467
This fortress, built by nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
WTiich serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house.
Against the envy of less happier lands ;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, '
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry.
As is the Sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son :
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leas'd out, I die pronouncing it.
Like to a tenement, or pelting farm.
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds."
Act II., Scene i.
Every motive to patriotism, every cause producing it, is
here collected, without one of those cold abstractions so
frequently substituted by modern poets. If this passage
were recited in a theatre with due energy and under-
standing, with a proper knowledge of the words, and a
fit expression of their meaning, every man would retire
from it secure in his country's freedom, if secure in his
own constant virtue.
The principal personages in this tragedy are Richard II.,
Boiingbroke, and York. I wiU speak of the last first,
although it is the least important ; but the keeping of aU
is most admirable. York is a man of no strong powers
of mind, but of earnest wishes to do right, contented
in himself alone, if he have acted well : he points out to
Richard the effects of his thoughtless extravagance, and
the dangers by which he is encompassed, but having done
so, he is satisfied ; there is no after action on his part ; he
does nothing ; he remains passive. When old Gaunt is
dying, York takes care to give his own opinion to the King,
and that done he retires, as it were, into himself.
It has been stated, from the first, that one of my purposes
in these lectures is, to meet and refute popular objections
to particular points in the works of our great dramatic
poet ; and I cannot help observing here upon the beauty,
468
The Twelfth Lecture
and true force of nature, with which conceits, as they
are called, and sometimes even puns, are introduced.
What has been the reigning fault of an age must, at one
time or another, have referred to something beautiful
in the human mind ; and, however conceits may have been
misapplied, however they may have been disadvantage-
ously multiplied, we should recollect that there never was
an abuse of anything, but it previously has had its use.
Gaunt, on his death-bed, sends for the young King, and
Richard, entering, insolently and unfeelingly says to him :
" What, comfort, man ! how is't with aged Gaunt ? "
Act II., Scene i.
and Gaunt replies :
" O, how that name befits my composition !
Old Gaunt, indeed ; and gaunt in being old :
Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast.
And who abstains from meat, that is not gaunt ?
For sleeping England long time have I watched ;
Watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt :
The pleasure that some fathers feed upon
Is my strict fast, I mean my children's looks ;
And therein fasting, thou hast made me gaunt,
Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave.
Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones."
Richard inquires,
" Can sick men play so nicely with their names ? "
To which Gaunt answers, giving the true justification
of conceits :
" No ; misery makes sport to mock itself :
Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,
I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee."
He that knows the state of the human mind in deep
passion must know, that it approaches to that condition
of madness, which is not absolute frenzy or delirium,
but which models all things to one reigning idea ; still
it strays from the main subject of complaint, and still
it returns to it, by a sort of irresistible impulse. Abrupt-
ness of thought, under such circumstances, is true to nature,
and no man was more sensible of it than Shakspeare.
In a modern poem a mad mother thus complains :
" The breeze I see is in yon tree :
It comes to cool my babe and me."
The Twelfth Lecture 469
This is an instance of the abruptness of thought, so natural
to the excitement and agony of grief ; and if it be admired
in images, can we say that it is unnatural in words, which
are, as it were, a part of our life, of our very existence ?
In the Scriptures themselves these plays upon words are
to be found, as well as in the best works of the ancients,
and in the most delightful parts of Shakspeare ; and
because this additional grace, not well understood, has
in some instances been converted into a deformity —
because it has been forced into places where it is evidently
improper and unnatural, are we therefore to include the
whole application of it in one general condemnation ?
When it seems objectionable, when it excites a feeling
contrary to the situation, when it perhaps disgusts, it is our
business to enquire whether the conceit has been rightly or
wrongly used — whether it is in a right or in a wrong place ?
In order to decide this point, it is obviously necessary to
consider the state of mind, and the degree of passion, of the
person using this play upon words. Resort to this grace
may, in some cases, deserve censure, not because it is a play
upon words, but because it is a play upon words in a wrong
place, and at a wrong time. What is right in one state of
mind is wrong in another, and much more depends upon
that, than upon the conceit (so to caU it) itself. I feel the
importance of these remarks strongly, because the greater
part of the abuse, I might say filth, thrown out and heaped
upon Shakspeare, has originated in want of consideration.
Dr. Johnson asserts that Shakspeare loses the world for a
toy, and can no more withstand a pun, or a play upon words,
than his Antony could resist Cleopatra. Certain it is,
that Shakspeare gained more admiration in his day, and
long afterwards, by the use of speech in this way, than
modem writers have acquired by the abandonment of the
practice : the latter, in adhering to, what they have been
pleased to caU, the rules of art, have sacrificed nature.
Having said thus much on the, often falsely supposed,
blemishes of our poet — blemishes which are said to prevail
in " Richard II " especially, — I will now advert to the
character of the King. He is represented as a man not
deficient in immediate courage, which displays itself at his
assassination ; or in powers of mind, as appears by the
foresight he exhibits throughout the play ; still, he is weak,
variable, and womanish, and possesses feelings, which.
470 The Twelfth Lecture
amiable in a female, are misplaced in a man, and altogether
unfit for a king. In prosperity he is insolent and pre-
sumptuous, and in adversity, if we are to believe Dr.
Johnson, he is humane and pious. I cannot admit the
latter epithet, because I perceive the utmost consistency
of character in Richard : what he was at first, he is at last,
excepting as far as he yields to circumstances : what he
shewed himself at the commencement of the play, he shews
hmiself at the end of it. Dr. Johnson assigns to him
rather the virtue of a confessor than that of a king.
True it is, that he may be said to be overwhelmed by the
earliest misfortune that befalls him ; but, so far from his
feelings or disposition being changed or subdued, the very
first glimpse of the returning sunshine of hope reanimates
his spirits, and exalts him to as strange and unbecoming a
degree of elevation, as he was before sunk in mental de-
pression : the mention of those in his misfortunes, who had
contributed to his downfall, but who had before been his
nearest friends and favourites, calls forth from him ex-
pressions of the bitterest hatred and revenge. Thus,
where Richard asks :
" Where is the Earl of Wiltshire ? Where is Bagot ?
What is become of Bushy ? Where is Green ?
That they have let the dangerous enemy
Measure our confines with such peaceful steps ?
If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it,
I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke."
Act III., Scene 2,
Scroop answers :
" Peace have they made with him, indeed, my lord."
Upon which Richard, without hearing more, breaks
out :
" O villains ! vipers, damn'd without redemption !
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man !
Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart I
Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas !
Would they make peace ? terrible hell make war
Upon their spotted souls for this offence ! "
Scroop observes upon this change, and tells the King how
they had made their peace :
" Sweet love, I see, changing his property
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
Again uncurse their souls : their peace is made
With heads and not with hands : those whom you curse
The Twelfth Lecture 471
Have felt the worst of death's destroying wound,
And lie full low, grav'd in the hollow ground."
Richard receiving at first an equivocal answer, — " Peace
have they made with him, indeed, my lord," — takes it in
the worst sense : his promptness to suspect those who
had been his friends turns his love to hate, and calls forth
the most tremendous execrations.
From the beginning to the end of the play he pours out
all the peculiarities and powers of his mind : he catches at
new hope, and seeks new friends, is disappointed, despairs,
and at length makes a merit of his resignation. He
scatters himself into a multitude of images, and in con-
clusion endeavours to shelter himself from that which is
around him by a cloud of his own thoughts. Throughout
his whole career may be noticed the most rapid transitions
— from the highest insolence to the lowest humility — from
hope to despair, from the extravagance of love to the
agonies of resentment, and from pretended resignation to
the bitterest reproaches. The whole is joined with the
utmost richness and copiousness of thought, and were there
an actor capable of representing Richard, the part would
delight us more than any other of Shakspeare's master-
pieces,— with, perhaps, the single exception of King Lear.
I know of no character drawn by our great poet with such
unequalled skill as that of Richard II.
Next we come to Henry Bolingbroke, the rival of
Richard II. He appears as a man of dauntless courage,
and of ambition equal to that of Richard III. ; but, as I
have stated, the difference between the two is most admir-
ably conceived and preserved. In Richard III. all that
surrounds him is only dear as it feeds his inward sense of
superiority : he is no vulgar tyrant — no Nero or Caligula :
he has always an end in view, and vast fertility of means
to accomplish that end. On the other hand, in Boling-
broke we find a man who in the outset has been sorely
injured : then, we see him encouraged by the grievances
of his country, and by the strange mismanagement of the
government, yet at the same time scarcely daring to look
at his own views, or to acknowledge them as designs. He
comes home under the pretence of claiming his dukedom,
and he professes that to be his object almost to the last ;
but, at the last, he avows his purpose to its fuU extent, of
which he was himself unconscious in the earlier stages.
472 The Twelfth Lecture
This is proved by so many passages, that I will only
select one of them ; and I take it the rather, because out
of the many octavo volumes of text and notes, the page on
which it occurs is, I believe, the only one left naked by the
commentators. It is where Bolingbroke approaches the
castle in which the unfortunate king has taken shelter :
York is in Bolingbroke's company — the same York who is
still contented with speaking the truth, but doing nothing
for the sake of the truth, — drawing back after he has spoken
and becoming merely passive when he ought to display
activity. Northumberland says,
" The news is very fair and good, my lord :
Richard not far from hence hath hid his head."
Act III.. Scene 3.
York rebukes him thus :
" It would beseem the Lord Northumberland
To say King Richard : — Alack, the heavy day.
When such a sacred king should hide his head 1 '*
Northumberland replies :
" Your grace mistakes me : only to be brief
Left I his title out." ^
To which York rejoins :
" The time hath been,
Would you have been so brief with him, he would
Have been so brief with you, to shorten you,
For taking so the head, your whole head's length."
Bolingbroke observes,
" Mistake not, uncle, farther than you should "
And York answers, with a play upon the words " take "
and " mistake " :
" Take not, good cousin, farther than you should.
Lest you mistake. The heavens are o'er our heads."
Here, give me leave to remark in passing, that the play
upon words is perfectly natural, and quite in character :
the answer is in unison with the tone of passion, and seems
connected with some phrase then in popular use.^ BoHng-
broke tells York :
1 So Coleridge read the passage, his ear requiring the insertion of mg, which is one
of the emendations in the corrected folio, 1652, discovered many years al terwards. —
J. P. C.
2 Nicholas Breton wrote a " Dialogue between the Taker and Mistaker," but the
earliest known edition is dated 1603. — J. P. C.
The Twelfth Lecture 473
" I know it, uncle, and oppose not myself
Against their will."
Just afterwards, Bolingbroke thus addresses himself to
Northumberland :
" Noble lord,
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle ;
Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parle
Into his ruin'd ears, and thus deliver."
Here, in the phrase " into his ruin'd ears," I have no
doubt that Shakspeare purposely used the personal pro-
noun, " his," to shew, that although Bolingbroke was only
speaking of the castle, his thoughts dwelt on the king. In
Milton the pronoun " her " is employed, in relation to
" form," in a manner somewhat similar. Bolingbroke had
an equivocation in his mind, and was thinking of the king,
while speaking of the castle. He goes on to tell North-
umberland what to say, beginning,
" Henry Bolingbroke,"
which is almost the only instance in which a name forms
the whole line ; Shakspeare meant it to convey Boling-
broke's opinion of his own importance : —
" Henry Bolingbroke
On both his knees doth kiss King Richard's hand.
And sends allegiance and true faith of heart
To his most royal person ; hither come
Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,
Provided that, my banishment repealed,
And lands restor'd again, be freely granted.
If not, I'll use th' advantage of my power,
And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood.
Rain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen."
At this point Bolingbroke seems to have been checked
by the eye of York, and thus proceeds in consequence :
" The which, how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke
It is, such crimson tempest should bedrench
The fresh green lap of fair King Richard's land,
My stooping duty tenderly shall show."
He passes suddenly from insolence to humihty, owing to
the silent reproof he received from his uncle. This change
of tone would not have taken place, had Bolingbroke been
allowed to proceed according to the natural bent of his
own mind, and the flow of the subject. Let me direct
474 The Twelfth Lecture
attention to the subsequent lines, for the same reason ;
they are part of the same speech :
" Let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum.
That from the castle's tatter'd battlements
Our fair appointments may be well perused.
Methinks, King Richard and myself should meet
With no less terror than the elements
Of fire and water, when their thundering shock
At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven."
Having proceeded thus far with the exaggeration of his
own importance, York again checks him, and Bohngbroke
adds, in a very different strain,
" He be the fire, I'll be the yielding water :
The rage be his, while on the earth I rain
My waters ; on the earth, and not on him."
I have thus adverted to the three great personages in
this drama, Richard, Bohngbroke, and York ; and of the
whole play it may be asserted, that with the exception of
some of the last scenes (though they have exquisite beauty)
Shakspeare seems to have risen to the summit of excel-
lence in the delineation and preserv^ation of character.
We will now pass to " Hamlet," in order to obviate some
of the general prejudices against the author, in reference
to the character of the hero. Much has been objected to,
which ought to have been praised, and many beauties of
the highest kind have been neglected, because they are
somewhat hidden.
The first question we should ask ourselves is — What did
Shakspeare mean when he drew the character of Hamlet ?
He never wrote any thing without design, and what was
his design when he sat down to produce this tragedy ?
My belief is, that he always regarded his story, before he
began to write, much in the same light as a painter regards
his canvas, before he begins to paint — as a mere vehicle for
his thoughts — as the ground upon which he was to work.
What then was the point to which Shakspeare directed
himself in Hamlet ? He intended to pourtray a person,
in whose view the external world, and all its incidents and
objects, were comparatively dim, and of no interest in
themselves, and which began to interest only, when they
were reflected in the mirror of his mind. Hamlet beheld
external things in the same way that a man of vivid
The Twelfth Lecture 475
imagination, who shuts his eyes, sees what has previously
made an impression on his organs.
The poet places him in the most stimulating circum-
stances that a human being can be placed in. He is the
heir apparent of a throne ; his father dies suspiciously ;
his mother excludes her son from his throne by marrying
his uncle. This is not enough ; but the Ghost of the
murdered father is introduced, to assure the son that he
was put to death by his own brother. What is the effect
upon the son ? — instant action and pursuit of revenge ?
No : endless reasoning and hesitating — constant urging
and solicitation of the mind to act, and as constant an
escape from action ; ceaseless reproaches of himself for
sloth and negligence, while the whole energy of his resolu-
tion evaporates in these reproaches. This, too, not from
cowardice, for he is drawn as one of the bravest of his time
— not from want of forethought or slowness of appre-
hension, for he sees through the very souJs of all who
surround him, but merely from that aversion to action,
which prevails among such as have a world in themselves.
How admirable, too, is the judgment of the poet !
Hamlet's own disordered fancy has not conjured up the
spirit of his father ; it has been seen by others : he is pre-
pared by them to witness its re-appearance, and when he
does see it, Hamlet is not brought forward as having long
brooded on the subject. The moment before the Ghost
enters, Hamlet speaks of other matters : he mentions the
coldness of the night, and observes that he has not heard
the clock strike, adding, in reference to the custom of
drinking, that it is
" More honour'd in the breach than the observance."
Act I., Scene 4.
Owing to the tranquil state of his mind, he indulges in
some moral reflections. Afterwards, the Ghost suddenly
enters.
" Hor. Look, my lord ! it comes.
Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! "
The same thing occurs in " Macbeth " : in the dagger-
scene, the moment before the hero sees it, he has his mind
applied to some indifferent matters ; " Go, tell thy
mistress," etc. Thus, in both cases, the preternatural
appearance has all the effect of abruptness, and the reader
476 The Twelfth Lecture
is totally divested of the notion, that the figure is a vision
of a highly wrought imagination.
Here Shakspeare adapts himself so admirably to the
situation — in other words, so puts himself into it — that,
though poetry, his language is the very language of nature.
No terms, associated with such feelings, can occur to us so
proper as those which he has employed, especially on the
highest, the most august, and the most awful subjects that
can interest a human being in this sentient world. That
this is no mere fancy, I can undertake to establish from
hundreds, I might say thousands, of passages. No char-
acter he has drawn, in the whole list of his plays, could so
well and fitly express himself, as in the language Shak-
speare has put into his mouth.
There is no indecision about Hamlet, as far as his own
sense of duty is concerned ; he knows well what he ought
to do, and over and over again he makes up his mind to do
it. The moment the players, and the two spies set upon
him, have withdrawn, of whom he takes leave with a line
so expressive of his contempt,
" Ay so ; good bye you. — Now I am alone,"
he breaks out into a delirium of rage against himself for
neglecting to perform the solemn duty he had undertaken,
and contrasts the factitious and artificial display of feeling
by the player with his own apparent indifference ;
" What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her ? "
Yet the player did weep for her, and was in an agony of
grief at her sufferings, while Hamlet is unable to rouse
himself to action, in order that he may perform the com-
mand of his father, who had come from the grave to incite
him to revenge : —
" This is most brave !
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell.
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a cursing like a very drab,
A scullion." Act II., Scene 2.
It is the same feeling, the same conviction of what is his
duty, that makes Hamlet exclaim in a subsequent part of
the tragedy :
The Twelfth Lecture 477
" How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man,
If his chief good, and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no more. * ♦ »
I do not know
Why yet I live to say — 'this thing's to do,'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't." Act IV., Scene 4.
Yet with all this strong conviction of duty, and with all
this resolution arising out jf strong conviction, nothing is
done. This admirable and consistent character, deeply
acquainted with his own feelings, painting them with such
wonderful power and accuracy, and firmly persuaded that
a moment ought not to be lost in executing the solemn
charge committed to him, still yields to the same retiring
from reality, which is the result of having, what we express
by the terms, a world within himself.
Such a mind as Hamlet's is near akin to madness.
Dryden has somewhere said,
" Great wit to madness nearly is allied,"
and he was right ; for he means by " wit " that greatness
of genius, which led Hamlet to a perfect knowledge of his
own character, which, with all strength of motive, was so
weak as to be unable to carry into act his own most obvious
duty.
With all this he has a sense of imperfectness, which
becomes apparent when he is moralising on the skull in the
churchyard. Something is wanting to his completeness —
something is deficient which remains to be supplied, and
he is therefore described as attached to Ophelia. His
madness is assumed, when he finds that witnesses have been
placed behind the arras to listen to what passes, and when
the heroine has been thrown in his way as a decoy.
Another objection has been taken by Dr. Johnson, and
Shakspeare has been taxed very severely. I refer to the
scene where Hamlet enters and finds his uncle praying, and
refuses to take his life, excepting when he is in the height
of his iniquity. To assail him at such a moment of con-
fession and repentance, Hamlet declares,
" Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge."
Act III., Scene 4.
He therefore forbears, and postpones his uncle's death,
until he can catch him in some act
478 The Twelfth Lecture
" That has no relish of salvation in't."
This conduct, and this sentiment, Dr. Johnson has pro-
nounced to be so atrocious and horrible, as to be unfit to
be put into the mouth of a human being. ^ The fact, how-
ever, is that Dr. Johnson did not understand the character
of Hamlet, and censured accordingly : the determination
to allow the guilty King to escape at such a moment is only
part of the indecision and irresoluteness of the hero.
Hamlet seizes hold of a pretext for not acting, when he
might have acted so instantly and effectually : therefore,
he again defers the revenge he was bound to seek, and
declares his determination to accomplish it at some time,
" When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th' incestuous pleasures of his bed."
This, allow me to impress upon you most emphatically,
was merely the excuse Hamlet made to himself for not
taking advantage of this particular and favourable moment
for doing justice upon his guilty uncle, at the urgent
instance of the spirit of his father.
Dr. Johnson farther states, that in the voyage to Eng-
land, Shakspeare merely follows the novel as he found it,
as if the poet had no other reason for adhering to his
original ; but Shakspeare never followed a novel, because
he found such and such an incident in it, but because he sav/
that the story, as he read it, contributed to enforce, or to
explain some great truth inherent in human nature. He
never could lack invention to alter or improve a popular
narrative ; but he did not wantonly vary from it, when he
knew that, as it was related, it would so well apply to his
own great purpose. He saw at once how consistent it was
with the character of Hamlet, that after still resolving, and
still deferring, still determining to execute, and still post-
poning execution, he should finally, in the infirmity of his
disposition, give himself up to his destiny, and hopelessly
place himself in the power, and at the mercy of his enemies.
Even after the scene with Osrick, we see Hamlet still
indulging in reflection, and hardly thinking of the task he
has just undertaken : he is all dispatch and resolution, as
far as words and present intentions are concerned, but all
hesitation and irresolution, when called upon to carry his
1 See Malone's Shakspeare by Boswell, vii., 382, for Johnson's note upon this part of
the scene. —J. P. C.
The Twelfth Lecture 479
words and intentions into effect ; so that, resolving to do
everything, he does nothing. He is full of purpose, but
void of that quality of mmd which accomplishes purpose.
Anything finer than this conception, and working out
of a great character, is merely impossible. Shakspeare
wished to impress upon us the truth, that action is the
chief end of existence — that no faculties of intellect, how-
ever brilliant, can be considered valuable, or indeed other-
wise than as misfortunes, if they withdraw us from, or
render us repugnant to action, and lead us to think and
think of doing, until the time has elapsed when we can
do anything effectually. In enforcing this moral truth,
Shakspeare has shown the fulness and force of his powers :
all that is amiable and excellent in nature is combined in
Hamlet, with the exception of one quality. He is a man
living in meditation, called upon to act by every motive
human and divine, but the great object of his life is de-
feated by continually resolving to do, yet doing nothing
but resolve.
END OF THE TWELFTH LECTURE.
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